- •12Th century;
- •17Th century;
- •18Th century;
- •20Th century
- •20Th century
- •To which literary subgenres did women like Ursula k. LeGuin increasingly turn in order to overturn male stereotypes about gender?
- •Which of the following voices had not had literary production encouraged and expanded during and after the 1960s thanks to increased political protests and activism?
- •How did the literary fortunes of Native American writers change as a result of the political and social movements of the 1960s?
- •Which does not represent one of the social tensions that the publication and impact of Howl (1956) and Life Studies (1959) illustrate about American society?
- •Which of the following best describes the ideal aesthetic value of contemporary literature?
- •Which of the following best describes how the realism of h. James and e. Wharton differs from that of w. D. Howells?
- •How is nature represented in Jack London’s “The Law of Life” and Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”?
- •Which work of nineteenth-century intellectual prose had the most influence on literary naturalism?
- •Which of the following American realists is best known for his comic experiments in regional vernacular?
- •Which sentence best describes the characteristic tones of the novels of American naturalist authors Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser?
- •What literary movement did William Dean Howells describe as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”?
- •How does Hamlin Garland portray Midwestern farmers in his story “Under the Lion’s Paw”?
- •How did local color writing about the legendary West compare with native American writings by Zitkala–Ša, Ohiyesa, and s. Winnemucca in their characters’ relationship to the land?
- •In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote The Significance of the Frontier on American History. Where did he place the frontier in that essay?
- •Which of the following sentences best defines literary naturalism?
- •Why did Jim run away from Miss Watson?
- •What was the effect of modernism on African American writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, and Langston Hughes?
- •Why did American authors treat the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, condemned to death in 1921 for a robbery and homicide, from a sympathetic standpoint?
- •How did new scientific advances concerning relativity, uncertainty, quantum theory affect the relationship between science and literature?
- •Which was not one of the three characteristic “issues” of American literary modernism?
- •In what way did authors use Hollywood to bridge the divide between serious and popular modernist literature?
- •Why did the writings of Karl Marx appeal to so many American writers and intellectuals in the 1920s and 30s?
- •What was the name of the small, experimental theater group, founded in 1915 by s. Glaspell, e. O’Neill in order to challenge Broadway’s control over the American drama scene?
- •What effect did de-emphasis of closure and certainty have on the types of subjectivity represented by modernist works?
- •Which of the following types of dramas performed in the us was not a distinctively American innovation (rather than one borrowed or adapted from another culture)?
- •In what way did the social debates of the 1920s mirror Ralph Waldo Emerson’s belief, in the 1840s, that “whosoever would be a man, must be a non-conformist”?
- •Which of the following events in European modernism occurred before World War I?
- •How did modernist poets’ emphases on directness, precision, and vividness of expression affect both poetry and prose during this period?
- •Which of the following best describes how the influential authors of the period 1914-1945 responded to the “internal fractures” caused by modernity?
- •Why did travel literature become an increasingly popular subgenre in the 1840s?
What literary movement did William Dean Howells describe as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”?
naturalism;
realism;
idealism;
romance
How does Hamlin Garland portray Midwestern farmers in his story “Under the Lion’s Paw”?
as blandly helpless victims of railroad companies and land speculators;
as stoic intellectuals willing to combine strenuous work and deep thought;
as sensuous lovers of nature with a tangible connection to the soil;
as hard workers broken by a series of droughts that have left them hopeless
How did local color writing about the legendary West compare with native American writings by Zitkala–Ša, Ohiyesa, and s. Winnemucca in their characters’ relationship to the land?
Westerns romanticized cowboys and gold miners as they exploited the landscape; native writing sadly recorded the loss of the land to the influx of American settlers;
Westerns of this period romanticized attacks on natives as a crusade against infidels, while native writings offered an ideal of coexistence with white settlers;
Westerns tried to depict the psychological effects of the frontier on the individual cowboy’s perspective, while native writings drew from tribal traditions;
Westerns attempted to debunk the heroic myth of the Old West by depicting cowboys as caretakers of the land; native writings portrayed cowboys more realistically as their enemies
In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote The Significance of the Frontier on American History. Where did he place the frontier in that essay?
at the north bend of the Missouri River in the Great Plains;
at the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains;
at the Pacific Coast;
he believed the frontier had vanished
Which of the following sentences best defines literary naturalism?
Naturalism represented life truly through a series of exterior descriptions of characters based on their class, wealth, psychology, and ethnic background;
Naturalism presented characters living harmoniously with the natural landscape and suggested that readers had a responsibility to care for the environment;
Naturalism focused on how life ought to be lived by repeatedly suggesting ideal moral and spiritual significances behind seemingly ordinary narrative events;
Naturalism depicted a world in which fate had replaced free will, characters were products of their environments, and events usually did not turn out for the best
What common ambition is shared by the regional writings of Mary Austin, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sarah Orne Jewett?
to represent the severe and repressed religious customs of New England;
to encourage readers to see the world from a woman’s perspective;
to depict and warn women about the dangers of the wilderness;
to stress the universal plight of women in all regions of the country
Which of the following was not a “muckraking,” anti–corruption writer?
Frank Norris of San Francisco;
Stephen Crane of New York City;
William Marcy Tweed of New York City;
Lincoln Steffens of San Francisco
Which of the following magazines established in the second half of the nineteenth century was devoted to western-themed writing?
the Overland Monthly;
the Atlantic Monthly;
Scribner’s Monthly;
the Galaxy
Which of the following best defines “local color” writing?
Local color writers were realists who used regionally specific settings for their literature;
Local color writers were women authors who responded to increased opportunities to publish in periodicals by appealing to specifically regional audiences;
Local color writers tried to borrow techniques of landscape painters to represent regional characters and events through recognizably broad-stroke treatments;
Local color writers sought to capture regionally distinctive perspectives by representing characteristic dialects, idioms, social relationships, and natural environments
What term was given to the nonfiction prose writings of the late nineteenth century that brought the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and sociology to the politics of social reform?
the literature of argument;
muckraking literature;
Molly Maguires;
problem prose
Which African-American author and statesman did W. E .B. Du Bois criticize in The Souls of Black Folk (1907)?
James Weldon Johnson;
Booker T. Washington;
Frederick Douglass;
Charles Chesnutt
Which of the following foreign authors provided the earliest influence on American authors interested in writing a realistic international art story?
Anton Chekhov;
Leo Tolstoy;
Gustave Flaubert;
Émile Zola
Which regional population does Kate Chopin portray in her novel The Awakening?
the Mississippi river culture of St. Louis, Missouri;
the Ozark miners of central Arkansas;
the former slaves of the Jim Crow South, with an emphasis on the blacks of Alabama;
the creoles of New Orleans and Louisiana
In the novel “Huckleberry Finn” written by Mark Twain the main characters Huck and Jim share all of the following qualities except:
belief in superstitions;
loyalty to friends;
enjoyment of playing practical jokes on friends;
sharp survival skills
Which of the following best describes Huck's feelings about his role in helping Jim run away from Miss Watson?
He dislikes Miss Watson and is happy to be involved in any scheme that will harm her financially;
Because he has grown up poor and friendless himself, Huck identifies with oppressed slaves and sees slavery as morally wrong;
He is convinced that he is behaving immorally by stealing Miss Watson's property, but he gives in to his own wicked tendencies;
He never intended to allow Jim to escape to the North