IMAT Reading Skills and General Knowledge · Literature and Philosophy
Greek Classics and Italian Literature from Dante to Ferrante
The Greek epics and tragedies that started European literature, the three great Tuscan writers of the 1300s, and the Italian classics and Nobel laureates since.
Why this matters
The past papers asked for true facts about Dante's life, a classic matched with its country, the books of Primo Levi and the author of a best-selling Neapolitan novel. Italian authors are home ground for a test set by the Italian ministry.
Concept 1 of 4: Greek epic, tragedy and comedy
European literature begins with two Greek epics about the Trojan War, sung by bards long before they were written down. In 5th-century Athens, drama grew out of religious festivals: tragedies about heroes destroyed by fate or pride, and comedies that mocked living politicians and thinkers.
Definition
- Epic: a long narrative poem about heroes. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are the first.
- Tragedy: the three great Athenian tragedians are Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
- Comedy: Aristophanes is the great comic playwright.
- History as a genre: Herodotus and Thucydides.
| Author | Work | What it is about |
|---|---|---|
| Homer | Iliad | The anger of Achilles in the last year of the Trojan War; the death of Hector |
| Homer | Odyssey | Odysseus' ten-year journey home to Ithaca and his wife Penelope |
| Sappho | Lyric poems | Love poetry from the island of Lesbos |
| Aeschylus | Oresteia | Trilogy: the murder of Agamemnon and the revenge of his son Orestes |
| Sophocles | Oedipus Rex; Antigone | Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother; Antigone buries her brother against the king's order |
| Euripides | Medea | Medea kills her own children to punish her unfaithful husband Jason |
| Aristophanes | The Clouds; Lysistrata | Comedies; The Clouds mocks Socrates, Lysistrata has women strike to end a war |
Practice this conceptself-check · 3 quick reps
Oedipus is Greek, not Roman
Oedipus Rex is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles (5th century BC). Classic-and-country questions pair a work with the wrong nation; Greek tragedy belongs to Athens, and Roman authors (Virgil, Ovid, Seneca) wrote in Latin.
Concept 2 of 4: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio: the three crowns of Italian literature
In the 1300s three Tuscans showed that the spoken language of Florence could carry great literature as well as Latin could. Their Tuscan became the basis of standard Italian. Each gave a model: Dante for the long poem, Petrarch for the love lyric, Boccaccio for prose stories.
Definition
- Dante Alighieri (Florence 1265, died in exile in Ravenna 1321). The Divine Comedy has three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso: 100 cantos in terza rima. Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory, Beatrice through Heaven. He also wrote the Vita Nuova.
- Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (Arezzo 1304 to 1374): the Canzoniere, 366 poems mostly for Laura; the model for the sonnet across Europe and a father of humanism.
- Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 to 1375): the Decameron.
| Writer | Life | Main work | Key facts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dante Alighieri | Born Florence 1265; exiled 1302; died Ravenna 1321 | Divine Comedy | Journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven; written in Tuscan, not Latin |
| Petrarch | Born Arezzo 1304; died Arquà 1374 | Canzoniere | 366 poems, most for Laura; crowned poet in Rome, 1341 |
| Giovanni Boccaccio | Born 1313 (Certaldo or Florence); died Certaldo 1375 | Decameron | 100 tales told over ten days by ten young people who leave Florence to escape the plague of 1348 |
Practice this conceptself-check · 4 quick reps
Dante lived in the 1200s and 1300s, not later
Dante was born in Florence in 1265 and died in 1321, so he was born in the 13th century and died before 1400. He wrote poetry, not tragedies; the word "Comedy" in his title means a story that ends happily, in Paradise.
Concept 3 of 4: Italian classics from Machiavelli to Verga
After the three crowns, each century produced a few Italian works that every school student reads. They line up with the European movements of their time: Renaissance epic, Enlightenment comedy, Romantic poetry and the novel, then realism. Learn the work with its author and one feature.
Definition
- Alessandro Manzoni (Milan, 1785 to 1873) wrote I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), the founding modern Italian novel. His mother was Giulia Beccaria, daughter of the Enlightenment jurist Cesare Beccaria.
- Giacomo Leopardi (Recanati, 1798 to 1837): the Canti, including "L'infinito"; a poet of deep pessimism.
- Verismo (Italian realism, late 1800s): Giovanni Verga, I Malavoglia (Sicilian fishermen).
| Writer | Work | Fact to remember |
|---|---|---|
| Niccolò Machiavelli | The Prince (written 1513) | Florentine; how a ruler gains and keeps power |
| Ludovico Ariosto | Orlando Furioso (1516) | Chivalric epic written at the court of Ferrara |
| Torquato Tasso | Gerusalemme liberata (1581) | Epic poem of the First Crusade |
| Carlo Goldoni | The Servant of Two Masters; La locandiera | Venetian playwright who reformed Italian comedy |
| Ugo Foscolo | Dei Sepolcri; Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis | Neoclassical and Romantic poet |
| Giacomo Leopardi | Canti (L'infinito) | Poet from Recanati |
| Alessandro Manzoni | I promessi sposi (final version 1840 to 1842) | Renzo and Lucia in Lombardy, 1628 to 1630, under Spanish rule and the plague |
| Giovanni Verga | I Malavoglia (1881) | Leader of verismo |
Practice this conceptself-check · 3 quick reps
Giulia Beccaria was Manzoni's mother, not Dante's
Giulia Beccaria (daughter of Cesare Beccaria) was the mother of Alessandro Manzoni, the Milanese novelist of the 1800s. Options attach her to Dante, who lived five centuries earlier.
Concept 4 of 4: Modern Italian writers and Italian Nobel laureates in literature
Italy has six Nobel Prizes in Literature, a favourite source of questions. The 20th-century novels below are the ones most translated and taught. Several deal with identity or with the Second World War, which helps you remember them.
Definition
- Italian Nobel laureates in Literature: Carducci (1906), Deledda (1926), Pirandello (1934), Quasimodo (1959), Montale (1975), Dario Fo (1997).
- Primo Levi (Turin, 1919 to 1987), a chemist deported to Auschwitz, wrote If This Is a Man, The Truce and The Periodic Table.
- Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym; her four Neapolitan novels begin with My Brilliant Friend (2011), about the friendship of Lenù and Lila in Naples.
| Writer | Work | Fact to remember |
|---|---|---|
| Giosuè Carducci | Odi barbare and other poems | First Italian Nobel in Literature, 1906 |
| Grazia Deledda | Canne al vento | Sardinian; Nobel 1926, the first Italian woman to win it |
| Luigi Pirandello | Six Characters in Search of an Author; The Late Mattia Pascal; One, No One and One Hundred Thousand | Sicilian; Nobel 1934; masks and identity |
| Italo Svevo | Zeno's Conscience (1923) | From Trieste; a novel shaped by psychoanalysis |
| Primo Levi | If This Is a Man; The Truce; The Periodic Table | Turin chemist, survivor of Auschwitz |
| Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa | The Leopard (1958) | A Sicilian prince at the time of unification |
| Italo Calvino | Invisible Cities; If on a Winter's Night a Traveller | Fantastic and experimental fiction |
| Umberto Eco | The Name of the Rose (1980) | Murder mystery in a medieval abbey |
| Elena Ferrante | My Brilliant Friend and the Neapolitan novels | Pseudonymous author; worldwide best-seller |
Practice this conceptself-check · 3 quick reps
A famous title by someone else
Questions on one author's books slip in a famous title by a different writer, often a philosopher. The Leopard is by Tomasi di Lampedusa, not Pirandello; The Name of the Rose is Eco's, not Calvino's. Know each author's own titles.
Summary — formulas & gotchas at a glance
A revision cheat-sheet for the formulas and gotchas above. Click any concept name to jump back to its full explanation.
Reference tables (4)
Greek epic, tragedy and comedy7 rows
| Author | Work | What it is about |
|---|---|---|
| Homer | Iliad | The anger of Achilles in the last year of the Trojan War; the death of Hector |
| Homer | Odyssey | Odysseus' ten-year journey home to Ithaca and his wife Penelope |
| Sappho | Lyric poems | Love poetry from the island of Lesbos |
| Aeschylus | Oresteia | Trilogy: the murder of Agamemnon and the revenge of his son Orestes |
| Sophocles | Oedipus Rex; Antigone | Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother; Antigone buries her brother against the king's order |
| Euripides | Medea | Medea kills her own children to punish her unfaithful husband Jason |
| Aristophanes | The Clouds; Lysistrata | Comedies; The Clouds mocks Socrates, Lysistrata has women strike to end a war |
Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio: the three crowns of Italian literature3 rows
| Writer | Life | Main work | Key facts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dante Alighieri | Born Florence 1265; exiled 1302; died Ravenna 1321 | Divine Comedy | Journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven; written in Tuscan, not Latin |
| Petrarch | Born Arezzo 1304; died Arquà 1374 | Canzoniere | 366 poems, most for Laura; crowned poet in Rome, 1341 |
| Giovanni Boccaccio | Born 1313 (Certaldo or Florence); died Certaldo 1375 | Decameron | 100 tales told over ten days by ten young people who leave Florence to escape the plague of 1348 |
Italian classics from Machiavelli to Verga8 rows
| Writer | Work | Fact to remember |
|---|---|---|
| Niccolò Machiavelli | The Prince (written 1513) | Florentine; how a ruler gains and keeps power |
| Ludovico Ariosto | Orlando Furioso (1516) | Chivalric epic written at the court of Ferrara |
| Torquato Tasso | Gerusalemme liberata (1581) | Epic poem of the First Crusade |
| Carlo Goldoni | The Servant of Two Masters; La locandiera | Venetian playwright who reformed Italian comedy |
| Ugo Foscolo | Dei Sepolcri; Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis | Neoclassical and Romantic poet |
| Giacomo Leopardi | Canti (L'infinito) | Poet from Recanati |
| Alessandro Manzoni | I promessi sposi (final version 1840 to 1842) | Renzo and Lucia in Lombardy, 1628 to 1630, under Spanish rule and the plague |
| Giovanni Verga | I Malavoglia (1881) | Leader of verismo |
Modern Italian writers and Italian Nobel laureates in literature9 rows
| Writer | Work | Fact to remember |
|---|---|---|
| Giosuè Carducci | Odi barbare and other poems | First Italian Nobel in Literature, 1906 |
| Grazia Deledda | Canne al vento | Sardinian; Nobel 1926, the first Italian woman to win it |
| Luigi Pirandello | Six Characters in Search of an Author; The Late Mattia Pascal; One, No One and One Hundred Thousand | Sicilian; Nobel 1934; masks and identity |
| Italo Svevo | Zeno's Conscience (1923) | From Trieste; a novel shaped by psychoanalysis |
| Primo Levi | If This Is a Man; The Truce; The Periodic Table | Turin chemist, survivor of Auschwitz |
| Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa | The Leopard (1958) | A Sicilian prince at the time of unification |
| Italo Calvino | Invisible Cities; If on a Winter's Night a Traveller | Fantastic and experimental fiction |
| Umberto Eco | The Name of the Rose (1980) | Murder mystery in a medieval abbey |
| Elena Ferrante | My Brilliant Friend and the Neapolitan novels | Pseudonymous author; worldwide best-seller |
Watch out for (4)
- Oedipus is Greek, not Roman→ Greek epic, tragedy and comedy
- Dante lived in the 1200s and 1300s, not later→ Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio: the three crowns of Italian literature
- Giulia Beccaria was Manzoni's mother, not Dante's→ Italian classics from Machiavelli to Verga
- A famous title by someone else→ Modern Italian writers and Italian Nobel laureates in literature
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