Literature, Culture and Civilisation of Italy
These questions ask you to write about Italian literary texts and about the historical and social contexts you have studied. Typical set texts run from Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio through Machiavelli, Leopardi, Manzoni and Verga to Pirandello, Svevo, Ungaretti, Montale and Calvino; cultural topics usually include the Risorgimento and Unità d'Italia, the questione meridionale, emigration, Fascism and the Resistenza, the boom economico, the Mafia and the 1948 Constitution.
How to build an answer
Read the directive first: analizza, commenta, confronta, in che modo. Then use a fixed shape:
- Thesis in one or two sentences.
- Textual evidence - a short quotation or precise paraphrase, never a plot summary.
- Technique, named accurately: metafora, anafora, enjambement, io lirico, terzina, novella, cornice, impersonalità, regressione, straniamento, umorismo, flusso di coscienza.
- Effect on the reader, then the link to context or poetics.
Worked example
Question: In che modo Verga presenta Rosso Malpelo? Reasoning: begin from the opening - «Malpelo si chiamava così perché aveva i capelli rossi» - and point out that the narrator reports the community's prejudice as though it were fact. Naming this as the narrator's regressione, the hallmark of verista impersonalità, turns an observation into an argument; the effect is that the reader must supply the judgement the narrator withholds, which is precisely the verista project of exposing the vinti. Plot summary earns little; technique plus effect earns most of the marks.
Traps
- Retelling the plot instead of analysing.
- Misattributing works: Il fu Mattia Pascal is Pirandello, La coscienza di Zeno is Svevo.
- Confusing author, narrator and character.
- Quoting without comment, or commenting without evidence.
- Answering only the first half of a two-part question.
- Vague praise (bello, importante) with no textual support.