Read carefully each short extract and complete the following exercises about narrative techniques, figurative language, characterisation and historical context. The activities cover key skills required in Year 3 of the Liceo Scientifico, where students approach literary texts from the Middle Ages to the Elizabethan and early Stuart period. Work in English, justify your choices with textual evidence whenever possible and pay attention to register, tone and style.
- Read this opening: «It was the season of mists, when the moors lay hushed beneath a pewter sky, and the manor stood like a sleeping animal among the bare oaks.» Which narrative element is most clearly foregrounded in these lines?
- A) The internal monologue of the protagonist
- B) The setting, used to create atmosphere
- C) A dialogue between two characters
- D) A flashback to an earlier event
- In a first-person narration the reader has direct access to the thoughts of every character in the story, exactly as in an omniscient third-person narrative.
- Vero / Falso
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A recurring image, object or phrase that gains symbolic meaning through repetition within a literary text is traditionally called a ___.
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Match each figure of speech with the example that illustrates it most accurately. | Colonna A | Colonna B | |---|---| | Simile | The classroom was a battlefield of whispered alliances. | | Metaphor | The old clock coughed before striking midnight. | | Personification | The weary wanderer whispered words of warning. | | Alliteration | Her laughter was like silver bells in the empty hall. |
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Read this passage: «Margaret pressed her forehead against the cold window. Outside, the gulls were already screaming over the harbour; inside, no one had spoken since breakfast.» In about three or four sentences, describe the mood of the scene and identify two textual elements that contribute to it.
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In a Shakespearean sonnet, the final rhymed couplet usually has the function of:
- A) Introducing a new character into the poem
- B) Providing a conclusive comment, twist or resolution of the theme
- C) Describing the physical setting in detail
- D) Listing the speaker's biographical data
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Choose either Geoffrey Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales or Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and write a structured paragraph (about 150–180 words) explaining how the text reflects the values, anxieties or contradictions of its historical period. Refer to at least one specific character or scene and to one stylistic feature.
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Analyse the following lines as a piece of close reading: «My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than her lips' red.» Identify the literary form, the rhetorical strategy used by the poet and the effect produced on the reader.