Card 0 of 48
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
Who is this author?
This is an excerpt from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy – specifically, the famous opening lines of The Inferno. Even if you didn’t recognize these lines, you could have noticed that the work is written in couplets and that it is a canto, both of which are identifying features of The Divine Comedy.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
What country is this author from?
Dante was from Florence, Italy.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
During what century was this work written?
Although Dante was born in the 1200s (exact date unknown), The Divine Comedy was begun around 1308 and completed in 1320. Dante died in 1321.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
One of the major characters in this work is the author of which epic poem?
Virgil, the Roman author of The Aeneid (19 BCE), serves as the narrator’s guide through Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Homer's The Illiad, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1674), Luis Vaz de Camoens's The Lusiads (1572), and Ovid's Metamorphoses were all used as alternative answer choices.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
Who is the author of this work?
These are the opening lines of Luís Vaz de Camões’s The Lusiads, an epic poem written in response to and as a creative reimagining of the widespread 15th- and 16th-century European maritime explorations – particularly to India.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
What country is this work from?
Luís Vaz de Camões is Portuguese and one of his country’s most famous poets, and The Lusiads is often referred to as Portugal’s national epic.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
In what century was this work written?
The work was published in 1572, and Luís Vaz de Camões lived from around 1524 to 1580.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
This poem’s dividing structure is the same as which other epic?
Both Dante’s Divine Comedy and de Damões’s The Lusiads are divided into cantos.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Of arms I sing, and of the man, whom Fate
First drove from Troy to the Lavinian shore.
Full many an evil, through the mindful hate
Of cruel Juno, from the gods he bore,
Much tost on earth and ocean, yea, and more
In war enduring, ere he built a home,
And his loved household-deities brought o’er
To Latium, whence the Latin people come,
Whence rose the Alban sires, and walls of lofty Rome.
Which poem is this?
These are the first lines of Virgil’s famous epic poem The Aeneid. The poem concerns the legend of Aeneas, with the first half discussing the hero’s travels from Troy to Italy and the second half describing the war between the Trojans and the Latins.
Passage adapted from Virgil’s Aeneid, trans. E. Fairfax Taylor (1907)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Of arms I sing, and of the man, whom Fate
First drove from Troy to the Lavinian shore.
Full many an evil, through the mindful hate
Of cruel Juno, from the gods he bore,
Much tost on earth and ocean, yea, and more
In war enduring, ere he built a home,
And his loved household-deities brought o’er
To Latium, whence the Latin people come,
Whence rose the Alban sires, and walls of lofty Rome.
When was this poem written?
The Aeneid was written sometime between 19 and 29 BCE.
Passage adapted from Virgil’s Aeneid, trans. E. Fairfax Taylor (1907)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Of arms I sing, and of the man, whom Fate
First drove from Troy to the Lavinian shore.
Full many an evil, through the mindful hate
Of cruel Juno, from the gods he bore,
Much tost on earth and ocean, yea, and more
In war enduring, ere he built a home,
And his loved household-deities brought o’er
To Latium, whence the Latin people come,
Whence rose the Alban sires, and walls of lofty Rome.
Which of the following works was not influenced by this one?
Boccaccio's The Decameron (1351), a 14th-century collection of Italian stories, does not demonstrate any direct influence by Virgil’s work; instead, The Decameron is often cited as the inspiration for other European prose (most notably, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1475)).
John Milton's Paradise Lost (1674), Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712), and Beowulf (975-1025?) were also used as alternative answers.
Passage adapted from Virgil’s Aeneid, trans. E. Fairfax Taylor (1907)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Of arms I sing, and of the man, whom Fate
First drove from Troy to the Lavinian shore.
Full many an evil, through the mindful hate
Of cruel Juno, from the gods he bore,
Much tost on earth and ocean, yea, and more
In war enduring, ere he built a home,
And his loved household-deities brought o’er
To Latium, whence the Latin people come,
Whence rose the Alban sires, and walls of lofty Rome.
Which of the following is not a major character in this work?
Although Aeneis is from Troy and Menelaus is the husband of Helen of Troy, Menelaus is in fact a major character in Homer’s The Iliad and not Virgil’s The Aeneid.
Passage adapted from Virgil’s Aeneid, trans. E. Fairfax Taylor (1907)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
Who is this author?
This is an excerpt from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy – specifically, the famous opening lines of The Inferno. Even if you didn’t recognize these lines, you could have noticed that the work is written in couplets and that it is a canto, both of which are identifying features of The Divine Comedy.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
What country is this author from?
Dante was from Florence, Italy.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
During what century was this work written?
Although Dante was born in the 1200s (exact date unknown), The Divine Comedy was begun around 1308 and completed in 1320. Dante died in 1321.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
One of the major characters in this work is the author of which epic poem?
Virgil, the Roman author of The Aeneid (19 BCE), serves as the narrator’s guide through Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Homer's The Illiad, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1674), Luis Vaz de Camoens's The Lusiads (1572), and Ovid's Metamorphoses were all used as alternative answer choices.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
Who is the author of this work?
These are the opening lines of Luís Vaz de Camões’s The Lusiads, an epic poem written in response to and as a creative reimagining of the widespread 15th- and 16th-century European maritime explorations – particularly to India.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
What country is this work from?
Luís Vaz de Camões is Portuguese and one of his country’s most famous poets, and The Lusiads is often referred to as Portugal’s national epic.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
In what century was this work written?
The work was published in 1572, and Luís Vaz de Camões lived from around 1524 to 1580.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
This poem’s dividing structure is the same as which other epic?
Both Dante’s Divine Comedy and de Damões’s The Lusiads are divided into cantos.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Compare your answer with the correct one above