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CLEP cheat sheet

CLEP English Literature cheat sheet

A condensed reference for the formulas, graph-reading rules, and must-know facts most worth reviewing before exam day.

Periods and signature authors

  • Medieval: Chaucer (Canterbury Tales), Beowulf.
  • Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, the sonnet.
  • 17th-18th c.: Milton (Paradise Lost), metaphysical poets (Donne), Pope, Swift.
  • Romantic: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Blake.
  • Victorian: Dickens, the Brontës, Tennyson, Hardy.
  • 20th century: Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats (modernism).

Terms to know

  • Sonnet forms (Shakespearean vs Petrarchan), blank verse, iambic pentameter.
  • Romantic values: nature, emotion, imagination, the individual.
  • Modernism: fragmentation, stream of consciousness, allusion.

Practice this first: Medieval and Renaissance — Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the Renaissance poets are a dense, high-yield block.

Now put it to work — practice CLEP English Literature free

Reviewing the sheet is step one. Passers are usually hitting about 70-80% on realistic practice before test day (CLEP costs about $93, with a 3-month retake lockout on a miss), so the fastest way to know you are ready is to start answering real questions.