IMAT General Knowledge - Italian Literature

Vocabulary flashcards covering prominent Italian writers, key biographical facts, literary movements, and major works.

Dante Alighieri

Florentine poet (1265–1321) who served as a central figure in the development of literary Italian; exiled from Florence and died in Ravenna. Known for Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova.

Divine Comedy

Major work by Dante Alighieri divided into three sections: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Francesco Petrarch

14th-century poet and humanist often called the father of Humanism, famous for poems addressed to Laura and author of Canzoniere.

Giovanni Boccaccio

14th-century Italian writer and major early Italian prose author; wrote The Decameron, which is framed during the Black Death.

Niccolò Machiavelli

Florentine political thinker and diplomat of the Renaissance associated with the realist analysis of political power; author of The Prince and Discourses on Livy.

Ludovico Ariosto

Renaissance poet and author of the major chivalric epic Orlando Furioso.

Torqato Tasso

Late Renaissance poet known for authoring Jerusalem Delivered.

Alessandro Manzoni

19th-century Italian novelist and poet who was a key figure in Italian Romanticism and language; author of The Betrothed / I Promessi Sposi.

Giacomo Leopardi

Major Italian Romantic poet and philosophical writer known for themes of pessimism, nature, and the human condition; author of Canti and Operette morali.

Giovanni Verga

Major Verismo writer known for realism about Sicilian society; author of I Malavoglia and Mastro-don Gesualdo.

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Poet, novelist, and nationalist public figure associated with decadentism; author of Il Piacere.

Luigi Pirandello

Sicilian playwright and novelist focused on identity and appearance vs reality who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934; author of Six Characters in Search of an Author and The Late Mattia Pascal.

Italo Svevo

Trieste writer known for psychologically modernist fiction and the novel Zeno's Conscience.