Q 01/05

Which Roman poet guides Dante through Hell and most of Purgatory?

A) Ovid

B) Virgil

C) Horace

D) Juvenal

Answer · why

B) Virgil

Virgil stands for human reason, which can take Dante only so far: at the top of Purgatory he vanishes without a word of farewell, and Dante weeps to f...

Q 02/05

Who takes over from Beatrice as Dante's guide for the final cantos of Paradiso?

A) Bernard of Clairvaux

B) Benedict of Nursia

C) Francis of Assisi

D) Saint Peter

Answer · why

A) Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard of Clairvaux arrives unannounced: Dante turns to ask Beatrice a question and finds an old man standing in her place, and it is his prayer to t...

Q 03/05

Dante's Comedy has 100 cantos: three parts of 33 and one what?

A) Epilogue

B) Interlude

C) Introduction

D) Dedication

Answer · why

C) Introduction

Introduction: the first canto, with Dante lost before the journey starts, opens the whole poem rather than Hell alone, which is why Inferno has one ca...

Q 04/05

What is the interlocking rhyme scheme of Dante's Divine Comedy called?

A) Ottava rima

B) Rima baciata

C) Sestina

D) Terza rima

Answer · why

D) Terza rima

Terza rima chains its tercets ABA BCB CDC, each middle line setting the next stanza's rhyme; Dante invented it for this poem, and Shelley later borrow...

Q 05/05

Who first attached the adjective 'Divine' to the poem Dante had simply called Comedy?

A) Petrarch

B) Boccaccio

C) Coluccio Salutati

D) Geoffrey Chaucer

Answer · why

B) Boccaccio

Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, is the first known to have called the poem 'divine', and in 1373 he gave public lectures on it in Florence; the wo...