American Literature
Visit our Web site at www.collegeboard.com/clep
for the most up-to-date information.
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved.
American Literature
Description of the Examination Knowledge and Skills Required
The American Literature examination covers mate- Questions on the American Literature examination
rial that is usually taught in a two-semester survey require candidates to demonstrate one or more of
course (or the equivalent) at the college level. It the following abilities in the approximate propor-
deals with the prose and poetry written in the tions indicated.
United States from colonial times to the present.
" Knowledge of the content of particular literary
It is primarily a test of knowledge about literary
works  their characters, plots, setting,
works  their content, their background, and their
themes, etc. (about 46 to 60 percent of the
authors  but also requires familiarity with the
examination)
terminology used by literary critics and historians.
" Ability to understand and interpret short poems
The examination emphasizes fiction and poetry
or excerpts from long poems and prose works
and deals to a lesser degree with the essay, drama,
presented in the test (about 25 to 40 percent of
and autobiography.
the examination)
In both coverage and approach, the examination
" Knowledge of the historical and social settings
resembles the chronologically organized survey
of specific works, their authors and influences
of American literature offered by many colleges.
on them, and their relations to other literary
It assumes that candidates have read widely and
works and to literary traditions (about 10 to
developed an appreciation of American literature,
15 percent of the examination)
know the basic literary periods, and have a sense of
" Understanding of the critical theories of
the historical development of American literature.
American writers and of critical terms, verse
The test contains 100 questions to be answered in
forms, and literary devices (about 5 percent
90 minutes. Some of these are pretest questions that
of the examination)
will not be scored. Any time candidates spend on
The subject matter of the American Literature
tutorials and providing personal information is in
examination is drawn from the following topics.
addition to the actual testing time.
The percentages next to the main topics indicate
An optional essay section can be taken in addition the approximate percentages of exam questions on
to the multiple-choice test. The essay section is those topics.
graded by the institution that requests it and is still
administered in a paper-and-pencil format.
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)
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 2
A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E
Questions 3  4
Sample Test Questions
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
wise than true,
Line
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
to trudge,
Directions: Each of the questions or incomplete
Where errors were not lessened (all
statements below is followed by five suggested
may judge).
answers or completions. Select the one that is
(10) At thy return my blushing was not small,
best in each case.
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
(A) philosophy
(C) Herman Melville
(B) book of poems
(D) Edgar Allan Poe
(C) unwanted child
(E) Henry David Thoreau
(D) despair
(E) intelligence
2. The  unpardonable sin committed by Ethan
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-
(D) personification
work
(E) hyperbole
(D) loss of faith in God
(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
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 3
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
(A) Wallace Stevens
(B) Flannery O Connor
(B) T.S. Eliot
(C) Thomas Wolfe
(C) Robert Frost
(D) William Faulkner
(D) Marianne Moore
(E) Robert Penn Warren
(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
(E) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was
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
as a literary form?
7. The sentences are taken from the opening
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
compleate, Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make
8. The phrase  the furniture of my mind was all
for mee. Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers
undusted still can best be paraphrased by
neate And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to
which of the following?
bee. My Conversation make to be thy Reele
And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele.
(A) I had become morose and antisocial.
(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
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 4
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,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
(A) Human beings are largely responsible for
But let there never be curtain drawn
their own fate.
Between you and me.
(B) By acts of courage, people may overcome
Line
inherent weakness. (5) Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And next thing most diffuse to cloud,
(C) Nature, though seemingly hostile, is actually
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
indifferent to human beings.
Could be profound.
(D) Through perseverance, a world of peace and
But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
harmony will ultimately be achieved.
(10) And if you have seen me when I slept,
(E) In any struggle, the strongest are fated
You have seen me when I was taken and
to survive.
swept And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
14. In The Great Gatsby, who is directly responsible
Fate had her imagination about her,
for the death of Myrtle Wilson?
(15)
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.*
(A) Daisy Buchanan
(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
(C) large branches
(A) transcendentalists
(D) imagination
(B) symbolists
(E) leaves
(C) realists
(D) romantics
18. When the tree is  taken and tossed (line 9), the
(E) naturalists
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
(C) the uncertainty of Fate herself
(A) Song of Solomon
(D) a lack of seriousness in nature
(B) Beloved
(E) shaken but unbowed human will
(C) The Bluest Eye
(D) Sula
(E) The Color Purple
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 5
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,
makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical
(B) The Age of Innocence
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
better than we are because we had to discover
(E) The Catcher in the Rye
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
21. In the passage, which of the following best
stumbling buzz
describes the speaker s attitude toward the
(B) A slanted ray of late-afternoon winter
very rich?
sunlight
(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
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 6
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
to Find
(E) slave traders
(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
(A) adjusts to the mores of international society
(B) prison conditions in turn-of-the-
in Europe
century America
(B) chooses the life of an artist rather
(C) a wounded soldier who tries in vain to
than marriage
escape the effects of war
(C) enters a convent in France
(D) racial problems in a small farming town
in Oklahoma (D) dies as the result of a night visit to
the Colosseum
(E) a drifter and his friend who dream hope-
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
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 7
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
(C) Their Eyes Were Watching God
which way soever they turned their eyes (save
(D) Native Son
upward to the heavens) they could have little
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
34. All of the following are writers of the Colonial
whole country, full of woods and thickets,
era EXCEPT:
represented a wild and savage hue.
(A) Anne Bradstreet
The passage above is from
(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
(E) Roger Williams
an Angry God
(C) James Fenimore Cooper s The Pioneers
35. Which of the following best describes a theme
(D) Thoreau s Walden
of Whitman s poem  Out of the Cradle
(E) Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter
Endlessly Rocking ?
(A) The desire of the poet to retreat to the
31. James T. Farrell, John Dos Passos, and John
protected life of the child
Steinbeck were a group who performed for the
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
(E) The awakening of the poet to his vocation
(A) social criticism
(B) stylistic innovation
36. The first of the four sections in The Sound and
(C) humorous entertainment
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
(E) Dilsey
(A) N. Scott Momaday
(B) Louise Erdrich
(C) Leslie Marmon Silko
(D) Toni Cade Bambara
(E) Jack Kerouac
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 8
A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E
37. Which of the following best describes people 40. Which of the following statements summarizes
as they are portrayed in the fiction of Crane, Booker T. Washington s message in a well-
Dreiser, and Norris? known speech delivered in Atlanta, Georgia, in
1895 and later included in his autobiography,
(A) Victims of original sin Up From Slavery?
(B) Self-determining entities
(A) Educational opportunities in the liberal
(C) Creatures shaped by biological, social,
arts are the key to social and economic
and economic factors
advancement for African Americans.
(D) Beings whose biological natures are
(B) Progress for both the African American and
fixed, but who are able to manipulate
the White community requires cooperation
their environments
in developing commercial and industrial
(E) Individuals who must be awakened to the
opportunities.
fact that their wills are free
(C) African Americans want to establish sepa-
rate, self-sustaining communities.
38. Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as
(D) The economic interests of the African
lead, and to tend downwards with great weight
American and White communities will
and pressure towards hell; and if God should let
inevitably develop separately.
you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly
(E) African Americans demand immediate and
descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf,
full equality in all aspects of life that are
and your healthy constitution and your own care
purely social.
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 41. All of the following writers deal extensively
spider s web would have to stop a falling rock. with the Jewish American experience EXCEPT
The passage above is an example of
(A) Philip Roth
(B) Bernard Malamud
(A) Puritanism
(C) Saul Bellow
(B) Transcendentalism
(D) John Barth
(C) Naturalism
(E) Isaac Bashevis Singer
(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
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 9
A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E
42. So it came to pass that as he trudged from the 44. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia
place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He of human virtue and happiness they might
came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover originally project, have invariably recognized it
tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were among their earliest practical necessities to allot
not. Scars faded as flowers. a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and
another portion as the site of a prison. . . . But,
It rained. The procession of weary soldiers on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at
became a bedraggled train, despondent and the threshold, was a wild rose-bush.
muttering, marching with churning effort in a
trough of liquid brown mud under a low,
In the passage above, the images of the cem-
wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw
etery, prison, and rose-bush set the tone for
that the world was a world for him, though
which of the following works?
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 (A) Jonathan Edwards Freedom of the Will
the past.
(B) Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter
(C) Herman Melville s Typee
The name of the central character in the work
(D) Washington Irving s  The Legend of
from which the passage above is taken is
Sleepy Hollow
(A) Thomas Sutpen
(E) Edgar Allan Poe s  The Fall of the House
of Usher
(B) Henry Fleming
(C) Clyde Griffiths
45. As part of a series of dramas chronicling the
(D) Frederic Henry
lives of African Americans in each decade of the
(E) Nick Carraway
twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize winner August
Wilson has written which of the following pairs
of plays?
43. Which of the following poets is best known for
sonnets that combine a traditional verse form
(A) The Crucible . . . A View from the Bridge
with a concern for modern women s issues?
(B) The Piano Lesson . . . Fences
(A) Edna St. Vincent Millay
(C) The Iceman Cometh . . . Desire Under
(B) Gertrude Stein
the Elms
(C) Marianne Moore
(D) Dutchman . . . The Slave
(D) H.D.
(E) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof . . . The Sweet Bird
of Youth
(E) Amy Lowell
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 10
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.
In which of the following modern American
You re one times one! They walk all over the
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
(C) Trifles
a metaphor for the young woman s
(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
narrator of Harper Lee s 1960 novel To Kill
(D) shyness and sensitivity
a Mockingbird?
(E) unusual taste in fashion
(A) Jem
47. Demands of Black people for the franchise,
(B) Dill
civic equality, and education of youth and
(C) Scout
opposition to Booker T. Washington s program
(D) Calpurnia
were voiced in The Souls of Black Folks by
(E) Mayella
(A) W.E.B. Du Bois
(B) Richard Wright
(C) Harriet Tubman
(D) Langston Hughes
(E) Zora Neale Hurston
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 11
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
1. B 26. B
anthology, which you can find in most college
2. A
27. C
bookstores. Most textbook anthologies contain a
3. B 28. D
representative sample of readings as well as discus-
4. D 29. B
sions of historical background, literary styles and
5. A
30. A
devices characteristic of various authors and peri-
6. D 31. A
ods, and other material relevant to the test. The
7. E 32. A
anthologies do vary somewhat in their content,
8. B
33. A
approach, and emphasis; you are advised to consult
9. B 34. B
more than one or to consult some specialized books
10. E 35. E
on major authors, periods, and literary forms and
11. D
36. C
terminology. You should also read some of the
12. C 37. C
major novels that are mentioned or excerpted in
13. C 38. A
the anthologies, such as Hawthorne s The Scarlet
14. A
39. C
Letter, Twain s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
15. C 40. B
and Chopin s The Awakening. Other novelists whose
16. E 41. D
major works you should be familiar with include
17. E
42. B
Melville, Crane, Wharton, Cather, Fitzgerald,
18. B 43. A
Hemingway, Faulkner, Ellison, and Wright. You can
19. D 44. B
probably obtain an extensive reading list of Ameri-
20. C
45. B
can literature from a college English department,
21. D 46. D
library, or bookstore.
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
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved. 12