American Literature

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American Literature
Description of the Examination
The American Literature examination covers mate-
rial that is usually taught in a two-semester survey
course (or the equivalent) at the college level. It
deals with the prose and poetry written in the
United States from colonial times to the present.
It is primarily a test of knowledge about literary
works — their content, their background, and their
authors — but also requires familiarity with the
terminology used by literary critics and historians.
The examination emphasizes fiction and poetry
and deals to a lesser degree with the essay, drama,
and autobiography.
In both coverage and approach, the examination
resembles the chronologically organized survey
of American literature offered by many colleges.
It assumes that candidates have read widely and
developed an appreciation of American literature,
know the basic literary periods, and have a sense of
the historical development of American literature.
The test contains 100 questions to be answered in
90 minutes. Some of these are pretest questions that
will not be scored. Any time candidates spend on
tutorials and providing personal information is in
addition to the actual testing time.
An optional essay section can be taken in addition
to the multiple-choice test. The essay section is
graded by the institution that requests it and is still
administered in a paper-and-pencil format.
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Knowledge and Skills Required
Questions on the American Literature examination
require candidates to demonstrate one or more of
the following abilities in the approximate propor-
tions indicated.
• Knowledge of the content of particular literary
works — their characters, plots, setting,
themes, etc. (about 46 to 60 percent of the
examination)
• Ability to understand and interpret short poems
or excerpts from long poems and prose works
presented in the test (about 25 to 40 percent of
the examination)
• Knowledge of the historical and social settings
of specific works, their authors and influences
on them, and their relations to other literary
works and to literary traditions (about 10 to
15 percent of the examination)
• Understanding of the critical theories of
American writers and of critical terms, verse
forms, and literary devices (about 5 percent
of the examination)
The subject matter of the American Literature
examination is drawn from the following topics.
The percentages next to the main topics indicate
the approximate percentages of exam questions on
those topics.
10 – 15% The Colonial Period (1620 – 1830)
25% The Romantic Period (1830 – 1870)
25% The Period of Realism and Natural-
ism (1870 – 1910)
25% The Modernist Period (1910 – 1945)
10 – 15% The Contemporary Period
(1945-Present)
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Sample Test Questions Questions 3 – 4

The following questions are provided to indicate Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
the types of questions that appear on the American Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Literature examination. CLEP examinations are Till snatched from thence by friends, less
designed so that average students completing a Line wise than true,
course in the subject can usually answer about (5) Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
half the questions correctly. Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press
Directions: Each of the questions or incomplete to trudge,
statements below is followed by five suggested Where errors were not lessened (all
answers or completions. Select the one that is may judge).
best in each case. (10) At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should
mother call,
1. Which of the following first recognized Walt I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Whitman as the great poet of the democratic Thy visage was so irksome in my sight.
spirit of America?
3. In line 1, “offspring” most probably refers to
(A) Nathaniel Hawthorne the author’s
(B) Ralph Waldo Emerson
(C) Herman Melville (A) philosophy
(D) Edgar Allan Poe (B) book of poems
(E) Henry David Thoreau (C) unwanted child
(D) despair
2. The “unpardonable sin” committed by Ethan (E) intelligence
Brand is
4. “My rambling brat” (line 11) is an example of
(A) allowing one’s intellectual curiosity to
violate the privacy of others (A) epigram
(B) any mortal transgression not followed (B) alliteration
by repentance
(C) simile
(C) the attempt to improve upon God’s handi-
work (D) personification
(D) loss of faith in God (E) hyperbole
(E) ambition deteriorating into a lust for power
5. In The Federalist, No. X, James Madison
proposed that the dangers of factions be con-
trolled by a

(A) republican form of government

(B) pure democracy
(C) curtailment of individual liberty
(D) reapportionment of property
(E) clause for emergency rule by a minority

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 A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

6. Characters with the last names of Snopes, 9. Which of the following poets derived the title,
Compson, and Sartoris figure prominently in the plan, and much of the symbolism of one of
the fiction of his or her major poems from Jessie Weston’s
From Ritual to Romance?
(A) Eudora Welty
(B) Flannery O’Connor (A) Wallace Stevens
(C) Thomas Wolfe (B) T.S. Eliot
(D) William Faulkner (C) Robert Frost
(E) Robert Penn Warren (D) Marianne Moore
(E) Langston Hughes
Questions 7 – 8
10. About which of the following works did Ernest
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Hemingway say, “It’s the best book we’ve had.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle All American writing comes from that”?
thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to
love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a (A) The Last of the Mohicans
life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, (B) Moby Dick
and trust.
(C) The Scarlet Letter
I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but (D) Walden
I was terrified to find that they required to be
dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was (E) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
all undusted still, and I threw them out the
window in disgust. 11. Which of the following writers was particularly
important in the development of the short story
7. The sentences are taken from the opening as a literary form?
pages of
(A) James Fenimore Cooper
(A) The House of Seven Gables, Hawthorne (B) Harriet Beecher Stowe
(B) “Nature,” Emerson (C) Frederick Douglass
(C) “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Melville (D) Edgar Allan Poe
(D) “Democratic Vistas,” Whitman (E) Edith Wharton
(E) Walden, Thoreau
12. Make me, O Lord, thy Spining Wheele
8. The phrase “the furniture of my mind was all compleate, Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make
undusted still” can best be paraphrased by for mee. Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers
which of the following? neate And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to
bee. My Conversation make to be thy Reele
(A) I had become morose and antisocial. And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele.
(B) I had not examined my ideas and beliefs.
The passage above is notable chiefly for
(C) I needed a change of scene.
(D) I was intellectually and emotion- (A) irony of statement
ally exhausted. (B) pathetic fallacy
(E) I had become so lazy that I could not work. (C) a literary conceit
(D) a paradox
(E) a simile

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 A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

13. Which of the following best states the theme of Questions 17 – 18

Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”?
Tree at my window, window tree,
(A) Human beings are largely responsible for My sash is lowered when night comes on;
their own fate. But let there never be curtain drawn
(B) By acts of courage, people may overcome Between you and me.
Line
inherent weakness. (5) Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
(C) Nature, though seemingly hostile, is actually And next thing most diffuse to cloud,
indifferent to human beings. Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
(D) Through perseverance, a world of peace and
harmony will ultimately be achieved. But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
(E) In any struggle, the strongest are fated (10) And if you have seen me when I slept,
to survive. You have seen me when I was taken and
swept And all but lost.

14. In The Great Gatsby, who is directly responsible That day she put our heads together,
for the death of Myrtle Wilson? Fate had her imagination about her,
(15) Your head so much concerned with outer,
(A) Daisy Buchanan Mine with inner, weather.*
(B) Jay Gatsby *From The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem,
Copyright 1928, © 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Copyright
(C) Tom Buchanan © 1956 by Robert Frost, Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Publishers.
(D) Nick Carraway
(E) George Wilson
17. The “light tongues” (line 7) are a metaphorical
reference to the tree’s
15. Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry
James are commonly described by literary (A) frivolous thoughts
historians as (B) inquisitiveness
(A) transcendentalists (C) large branches
(B) symbolists (D) imagination
(C) realists (E) leaves
(D) romantics
(E) naturalists 18. When the tree is “taken and tossed” (line 9), the
speaker sees the tree as an image of

16. All of the following were written by Toni (A) the ruthlessness of nature
Morrison EXCEPT (B) his own troubled mind
(A) Song of Solomon (C) the uncertainty of Fate herself
(B) Beloved (D) a lack of seriousness in nature
(C) The Bluest Eye (E) shaken but unbowed human will
(D) Sula
(E) The Color Purple

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 A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

19. Which of the following novels has as its main Questions 21 – 22

concern the experiences of an African American
protagonist? Let me tell you about the very rich. They are
different from you and me. They possess and
(A) All the King’s Men enjoy early, and it does something to them,
(B) The Age of Innocence makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical
where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you
(C) Henderson the Rain King were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.
(D) Invisible Man They think, deep in their hearts, that they are
(E) The Catcher in the Rye better than we are because we had to discover
the compensations and refuges of life for
ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our
20. Which of the following does NOT appear in a world or sink below us, they still think that they
poem by Emily Dickinson? are better than we are. They are different.
(A) A fly in a still room making an “uncertain
stumbling buzz” 21. In the passage, which of the following best
(B) A slanted ray of late-afternoon winter describes the speaker’s attitude toward the
sunlight very rich?
(C) A rain-filled red wheelbarrow “beside the (A) He finds their cynicism alarming and
white chickens” unwarranted.
(D) A train metaphorically described in terms of (B) He believes that, because of their advan-
a horse tages and experiences, the rich know more
(E) A saddened person who “never lost as much than others do.
but twice” (C) He is envious of their moral superiority.
(D) He thinks that he understands their psy-
chology even though he has not shared
their advantages.
(E) He finds them so different from the rest of
society as to be practically unknowable.

22. The passage was written by

(A) F. Scott Fitzgerald

(B) John P. Marquand
(C) John Steinbeck
(D) Sinclair Lewis
(E) Theodore Dreiser

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 A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

23. The King and the Duke in Mark Twain’s Adven- 27. Bigger Thomas is the central character in
tures of Huckleberry Finn are
(A) Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
(A) aristocrats (B) Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the
(B) confidence men Sad Cafe
(C) slaves (C) Richard Wright’s Native Son
(D) tradesmen (D) Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard
(E) slave traders to Find”
(E) Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel
24. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath depicts
28. The title character of Henry James’s Daisy
(A) the plight of dispossessed farmers who Miller finally
migrate to California
(B) prison conditions in turn-of-the- (A) adjusts to the mores of international society
century America in Europe
(C) a wounded soldier who tries in vain to (B) chooses the life of an artist rather
escape the effects of war than marriage
(D) racial problems in a small farming town (C) enters a convent in France
in Oklahoma (D) dies as the result of a night visit to
(E) a drifter and his friend who dream hope- the Colosseum
lessly of better lives (E) marries an Italian nobleman

25. Sky Woman, Wolverine, and Turtle are all 29. Which of the following writers was a part of the
important figures in which of the following Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African
types of literature? American literature and art during the 1920’s?

(A) Puritan allegorical tales (A) Frederick Douglass

(B) Frontier tall tales (B) Zora Neale Hurston
(C) African American animal fables (C) Phillis Wheatley
(D) Native American oral tales (D) Alice Walker
(E) Hispanic American magical-realist stories (E) James Baldwin

26. At the end of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the

heroine does which of the following?

(A) Travels to a new home

(B) Walks into the sea
(C) Makes a speech
(D) Has a child
(E) Marries for the second time

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 A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

30. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and 33. The characters Shug Avery, Celie, and Mister
desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild appear in which of the following novels?
men — and what multitudes of them they knew
not. Neither could they as it were, go up to the (A) The Color Purple
top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a (B) Song of Solomon
more goodly country to feed their hopes; for
which way soever they turned their eyes (save (C) Their Eyes Were Watching God
upward to the heavens) they could have little (D) Native Son
solace or content in respect of any outward (E) Light in August
objects. For summer being done, all things stand
upon them with a weather-beaten face, and the
whole country, full of woods and thickets, 34. All of the following are writers of the Colonial
represented a wild and savage hue. era EXCEPT:

The passage above is from (A) Anne Bradstreet

(B) Margaret Fuller
(A) William Bradford’s The History of (C) Cotton Mather
Plimouth Plantation
(D) Phillis Wheatley
(B) Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God” (E) Roger Williams
(C) James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers
(D) Thoreau’s Walden 35. Which of the following best describes a theme
of Whitman’s poem “Out of the Cradle
(E) Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter Endlessly Rocking”?

31. James T. Farrell, John Dos Passos, and John (A) The desire of the poet to retreat to the
Steinbeck were a group who performed for the protected life of the child
thirties much the same service that Frank (B) The grief that overwhelmed America at
Norris, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser had Lincoln’s death
performed for an earlier generation in America. (C) The celebration of America as the hope of
the world
The service referred to above is that of
(D) The anguish of a man confronted by war
(A) social criticism (E) The awakening of the poet to his vocation
(B) stylistic innovation
(C) humorous entertainment 36. The first of the four sections in The Sound and
the Fury is narrated by
(D) chronicling of regional customs
(E) celebration of urban life (A) Caddy
(B) Quentin
32. The Native American author of the Pulitzer (C) Benjy
Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn is
(D) Jason
(A) N. Scott Momaday (E) Dilsey
(B) Louise Erdrich
(C) Leslie Marmon Silko
(D) Toni Cade Bambara
(E) Jack Kerouac

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 A M E R I C A N
37. Which of the following best describes people
as they are portrayed in the fiction of Crane,
Dreiser, and Norris?
(A) Victims of original sin
(B) Self-determining entities
(C) Creatures shaped by biological, social,
and economic factors
(D) Beings whose biological natures are
fixed, but who are able to manipulate
their environments
(E) Individuals who must be awakened to the
fact that their wills are free
38. Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as
lead, and to tend downwards with great weight
and pressure towards hell; and if God should let
you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly
descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf,
and your healthy constitution and your own care
and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your
righteousness, would have no more influence to
uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a
spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.
The passage above is an example of
(A) Puritanism
(B) Transcendentalism
(C) Naturalism
(D) Realism
(E) Deism
39. Which of the following writers, born into a
family of New England ministers, achieved
popular success with an abolitionist novel?
(A) Mary Wilkins Freeman
(B) Sarah Orne Jewett
(C) Harriet Beecher Stowe
(D) Rebecca Harding Davis
(E) Louisa May Alcott
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L I T E R A T U R E
40. Which of the following statements summarizes
Booker T. Washington’s message in a well-
known speech delivered in Atlanta, Georgia, in
1895 and later included in his autobiography,
Up From Slavery?
(A) Educational opportunities in the liberal
arts are the key to social and economic
advancement for African Americans.
(B) Progress for both the African American and
the White community requires cooperation
in developing commercial and industrial
opportunities.
(C) African Americans want to establish sepa-
rate, self-sustaining communities.
(D) The economic interests of the African
American and White communities will
inevitably develop separately.
(E) African Americans demand immediate and
full equality in all aspects of life that are
purely social.
41. All of the following writers deal extensively
with the Jewish American experience EXCEPT
(A) Philip Roth
(B) Bernard Malamud
(C) Saul Bellow
(D) John Barth
(E) Isaac Bashevis Singer
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 A M E R I C A N
42. So it came to pass that as he trudged from the
place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He
came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover
tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were
not. Scars faded as flowers.
It rained. The procession of weary soldiers
became a bedraggled train, despondent and
muttering, marching with churning effort in a
trough of liquid brown mud under a low,
wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw
that the world was a world for him, though
many discovered it to be made of oaths and
walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red
sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in
the past.
The name of the central character in the work
from which the passage above is taken is
(A) Thomas Sutpen
(B) Henry Fleming
(C) Clyde Griffiths
(D) Frederic Henry
(E) Nick Carraway
43. Which of the following poets is best known for
sonnets that combine a traditional verse form
with a concern for modern women’s issues?
(A) Edna St. Vincent Millay
(B) Gertrude Stein
(C) Marianne Moore
(D) H.D.
(E) Amy Lowell
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L I T E R A T U R E
44. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia
of human virtue and happiness they might
originally project, have invariably recognized it
among their earliest practical necessities to allot
a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and
another portion as the site of a prison. . . . But,
on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at
the threshold, was a wild rose-bush.
In the passage above, the images of the cem-
etery, prison, and rose-bush set the tone for
which of the following works?
(A) Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will
(B) Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
(C) Herman Melville’s Typee
(D) Washington Irving’s “The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow”
(E) Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House
of Usher”
45. As part of a series of dramas chronicling the
lives of African Americans in each decade of the
twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize winner August
Wilson has written which of the following pairs
of plays?
(A) The Crucible . . . A View from the Bridge
(B) The Piano Lesson . . . Fences
(C) The Iceman Cometh . . . Desire Under
the Elms
(D) Dutchman . . . The Slave
(E) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof . . . The Sweet Bird
of Youth
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 A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

46. “I wish that you were my sister, I’d teach you to 48. “You’ve just seen a prince walk by. A fine,
have some confidence in yourself. The different troubled prince. A hard-working, unappreciated
people are not like other people, but being prince. A pal, you understand? Always for
different is nothing to be ashamed of . . . . Other his boys.”
people are . . . one hundred times one thousand.
You’re one times one! They walk all over the In which of the following modern American
earth. You just stay here. They’re common as — plays is the principal character described above?
weeds, but — you — well, you’re Blue Roses.”
(A) The Glass Menagerie
In the passage above from Tennessee Williams’ (B) The Hairy Ape
The Glass Menagerie, the term “Blue Roses” is
a metaphor for the young woman’s (C) Trifles
(D) A Raisin in the Sun
(A) favorite flowers (E) Death of a Salesman
(B) profession as a dancer
(C) vivacious personality 49. Which of the following is the first-person
(D) shyness and sensitivity narrator of Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill
(E) unusual taste in fashion a Mockingbird?

(A) Jem
47. Demands of Black people for the franchise, (B) Dill
civic equality, and education of youth and
opposition to Booker T. Washington’s program (C) Scout
were voiced in The Souls of Black Folks by (D) Calpurnia
(E) Mayella
(A) W.E.B. Du Bois
(B) Richard Wright
(C) Harriet Tubman
(D) Langston Hughes
(E) Zora Neale Hurston

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 A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

Study Resources
Answer Key
To prepare for the American Literature exam, you
should read critically the contents of at least one
anthology, which you can find in most college 1. B 26. B
bookstores. Most textbook anthologies contain a 2. A 27. C
representative sample of readings as well as discus- 3. B 28. D
sions of historical background, literary styles and 4. D 29. B
devices characteristic of various authors and peri- 5. A 30. A
ods, and other material relevant to the test. The 6. D 31. A
anthologies do vary somewhat in their content, 7. E 32. A
approach, and emphasis; you are advised to consult 8. B 33. A
more than one or to consult some specialized books 9. B 34. B
on major authors, periods, and literary forms and 10. E 35. E
terminology. You should also read some of the 11. D 36. C
major novels that are mentioned or excerpted in 12. C 37. C
the anthologies, such as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet 13. C 38. A
Letter, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 14. A 39. C
and Chopin’s The Awakening. Other novelists whose 15. C 40. B
major works you should be familiar with include 16. E 41. D
Melville, Crane, Wharton, Cather, Fitzgerald, 17. E 42. B
Hemingway, Faulkner, Ellison, and Wright. You can 18. B 43. A
probably obtain an extensive reading list of Ameri- 19. D 44. B
can literature from a college English department, 20. C 45. B
library, or bookstore. 21. D 46. D
22. A 47. A
Additional suggestions for preparing for 23. B 48. E
CLEP exams are given in “Preparing to Take 24. A 49. C
CLEP Examinations.” 25. D

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