Use these CLEP American Literature sample questions to review major literary periods, authors, works, movements, themes, and passage-analysis skills. The set includes material ranging from colonial literature through contemporary fiction.
Topics Covered
- Colonial and early American literature
- American Romanticism
- Poetry analysis
- Realism and Naturalism
- American Modernism
- The Harlem Renaissance
- Contemporary American literature
- Authors and major works
- Literary devices and themes
Sample Questions
- A. Anne Bradstreet
- B. Benjamin Franklin
- C. Jonathan Edwards
- D. Thomas Paine
- E. Washington Irving
Show Answer
Jonathan Edwards delivered “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” one of the best-known sermons associated with the Great Awakening.
The work belongs to the colonial religious tradition of American literature.
- A. A strict effort to reproduce ordinary life without idealization
- B. An emphasis on imagination, emotion, intuition, nature, and the individual
- C. A belief that heredity and environment completely determine behavior
- D. A preference for fragmented narration and postwar disillusionment
- E. A rejection of symbolism in favor of documentary reporting
Show Answer
American Romanticism emphasized imagination, emotion, intuition, individual experience, and the power or mystery of nature.
Realism focused more directly on ordinary life, while Naturalism often emphasized environmental and hereditary forces.
Read the poem and answer Questions 3–4.
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my Soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my Soul.
- A. Alliteration
- B. Onomatopoeia
- C. End rhyme
- D. Assonance
- E. Internal rhyme
Show Answer
The neighboring words vacant and vast begin with the same consonant sound.
The repetition of an initial consonant sound is alliteration.
- A. The soul observes the spider without sharing any of its qualities.
- B. The spider represents nature’s indifference to human thought.
- C. The soul warns the spider to stop wasting its effort.
- D. The spider’s search for an anchoring point becomes a metaphor for the soul’s search for connection.
- E. The spider symbolizes a physical danger threatening the speaker.
Show Answer
The first stanza presents the spider sending out filaments into empty space.
The second stanza transfers that image to the soul, which also reaches outward in hopes of forming a bridge or finding an anchor.
- A. Edith Wharton
- B. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- C. Kate Chopin
- D. Willa Cather
- E. Sarah Orne Jewett
Show Answer
Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening, published in 1899.
The novel is commonly studied in connection with late nineteenth-century realism, regional writing, gender expectations, and individual autonomy.
- A. Characters routinely escape social pressures through imagination alone.
- B. Characters are often shaped by heredity, environment, economic conditions, and forces beyond their control.
- C. Writers avoid social problems and focus exclusively on myth.
- D. Plots depend mainly on supernatural intervention.
- E. Authors present idealized heroes who always overcome adversity.
Show Answer
Naturalist writers often portray human behavior as strongly influenced by heredity, environment, social conditions, and material circumstances.
This approach is generally less optimistic about individual freedom than Romanticism.
- A. Puritan theology, conversion, and divine judgment
- B. Frontier survival, westward migration, and wilderness exploration
- C. Industrial labor, scientific progress, and utopian technology
- D. Wealth, social class, ambition, self-invention, and the American Dream
- E. Colonial government, revolution, and national independence
Show Answer
The Great Gatsby examines wealth, class, ambition, reinvention, and the promises and failures associated with the American Dream.
Its Jazz Age setting also connects the novel to the social and moral tensions of American Modernism.
- A. Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston
- B. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson
- C. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville
- D. John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway
- E. Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards
Show Answer
Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were major writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
The movement fostered major developments in Black American literature and cultural expression during the 1920s and 1930s.
- A. Alice Walker
- B. James Baldwin
- C. Ralph Ellison
- D. Maya Angelou
- E. Toni Morrison
Show Answer
Toni Morrison wrote Beloved, published in 1987.
The novel explores the continuing psychological and historical effects of slavery through memory, family relationships, trauma, and haunting.
Read the poem and answer Question 10.
I died for Beauty—but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room—
He questioned softly “Why I failed”?
“For Beauty,” I replied—
“And I—for Truth—Themself are One—
We Brethren, are,” He said—
And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night—
We talked between the Rooms—
Until the Moss had reached our lips—
And covered up—our names—
- A. The speakers will soon return to ordinary life.
- B. Time and death gradually silence the speakers and erase their individual identities.
- C. Beauty and Truth become enemies after death.
- D. The cemetery is carefully maintained by visitors.
- E. The speakers regret having valued ideals during life.
Show Answer
The moss first reaches the speakers’ lips, ending their conversation, and then covers their names.
The image suggests the gradual silencing and erasure produced by time and death, even as Beauty and Truth are presented as kindred ideals.
How to Use These Questions
For passage questions, support your answer with specific wording, imagery, structure, or literary devices from the selection. For knowledge questions, connect each author and work with its literary period, major themes, and historical context.
These practice questions are not official CLEP questions and are not endorsed by the College Board.
CLEP® is a registered trademark of the College Board, which is not affiliated with StudyGuideZone.com or Mometrix Test Preparation.