Introduction to Medieval Studies (MDVS 200) Practice Test

Authorship and its significance in medieval literature are being tested here. The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written in the early 1300s by Dante Alighieri, a Florentine poet who wrote while in exile from his city. It’s notable for being in the vernacular Italian rather than Latin, helping to establish Italian as a literary language. The work journeys through three realms—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—using this pilgrimage to examine sin, virtue, and salvation within a medieval Christian worldview. The other writers listed were influential figures in their own right but did not author this poem: Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in Middle English; Giovanni Boccaccio authored The Decameron; Thomas Aquinas produced scholastic philosophy and theology, like the Summa Theologica. So, the author of The Divine Comedy is Dante Alighieri.