Maturità / Esame di Stato (Italy) · Italian Literature and Language

Italian literature and language

36 practice questions, each with the answer and an explanation.

Practise Italian literature and language now

Random questions from this topic, one at a time. You see the answer and the explanation straight after each one.

All 36 questions

  1. Which poet wrote the Divine Comedy, an epic journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise?
  2. How many novelle (stories) are told in Boccaccio's Decameron?
  3. What is the main subject of Petrarch's Canzoniere?
  4. Which author wrote the historical novel I promessi sposi?
  5. Which poet wrote the short poem L'infinito, beginning "Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle"?
  6. Which Italian writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934?
  7. What is the term for a line of Italian verse with eleven syllables, the main line of Dante's Comedy?
  8. Which movement did Filippo Tommaso Marinetti launch with a manifesto published in 1909?
  9. In Italian, which auxiliary verb is used in the passato prossimo of the verb andare (to go)?
  10. Which of these authors wrote If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo), about the Auschwitz camp?
  11. What name is given to the poetic group of Guinizelli, Cavalcanti and the young Dante, which celebrated a refined love?
  12. What rhyme scheme does the terza rima of Dante's Comedy follow?
  13. Which book does Machiavelli's The Prince (Il Principe) mainly discuss?
  14. Which literary current is Giovanni Verga associated with, and what technique does it favour?
  15. In Pirandello's essay On Humour (L'umorismo), what does the "sentimento del contrario" mean?
  16. Which novel by Italo Svevo tells the story of a man who writes his memoirs at the request of his psychoanalyst?
  17. Which poet created the idea of the "fanciullino" (the child within), a poet who sees the world with a child's wonder?
  18. What is the language question that Manzoni addressed in revising I promessi sposi?
  19. Which of these sentences uses the subjunctive correctly after an expression of doubt?
  20. What does the term "correlativo oggettivo", associated with Montale, mean?
  21. Which poem collection by Giuseppe Ungaretti includes "Mattina" with the two lines "M'illumino / d'immenso"?
  22. Which novel describes a young nobleman who decides to live permanently in the trees, in the Ligurian countryside?
  23. Which sentence correctly uses the particle "ne" in Italian?
  24. Which author wrote the epic poem Gerusalemme liberata?
  25. In the first paper of the maturità (prima prova), what does the task of Typology A require?
  26. Which of these writers is often grouped with the neorealist period of the 1940s and 1950s?
  27. Read the line "Il cielo è di piombo". Which figure of speech does it contain, and what does it suggest?
  28. A candidate analyses Leopardi's A Silvia. Which interpretation best connects the poem to his "pessimismo"?
  29. Which statement best explains why Foscolo's Dei Sepolcri argues that tombs matter even for those who do not believe in an afterlife?
  30. In Verga's "ciclo dei vinti", what do the "vinti" represent, and which two novels were completed?
  31. Which sentence correctly combines two pronouns in Italian: "I gave the book to him"?
  32. A student must compare Pirandello's Il fu Mattia Pascal with Svevo's La coscienza di Zeno. What is the key difference in their treatment of identity?
  33. Which reading of Ungaretti's "Soldati" ("Si sta come / d'autunno / sugli alberi / le foglie") is the most accurate?
  34. In Dante's Divine Comedy, who guides the poet through Hell and most of Purgatory?
  35. Who was the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1906?
  36. Which sentence correctly uses the passato remoto to narrate a completed event in the distant past?

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