Students’ Questions Answered by Our Experts Page 63

The reviewer most likely called Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass “a mass of rotten filth” because of the graphic and explicit sexual content present throughout the poems.

The Divine Comedy was written in the vernacular so that it could be understood by the common people. Dante wanted to make his work accessible to as many people as possible.

It’s a story about two teenage misfits who find love with each other.

Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and duellist who lived in the 17th century.

Alice in Wonderland is a book about a girl who falls into a rabbit hole and has a series of adventures in a strange place called Wonderland.

The Da Vinci Code is a mystery novel by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon as he tries to solve a murder mystery.

Dante’s Inferno has nine layers of the underworld, each for a different sin.

Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and dueller. He was born in Paris in 1619 and died in 1655.

Charles Dickens was a social critic who wrote about the problems he saw in society. Hard Times is a novel about the difficulties of working class life in Victorian England.

Thoreau and John Thornton both had a love of nature and a respect for all living things.