Alessandro Manzoni

"Set at the time of the Third Crusade (1189-92), The Betrothed is the first of Scott's Tales of the Crusaders, and although set in the Welsh Marches it is a crusading novel in that it is about those who stayed at home. The betrothed is Eveline, daughter of a Norman warrior, who is a victim of the Crusade in that her intended husband is required by the Church to fulfil his vow to take the Cross. He departs for three years. The full horror of an arranged marriage, and of being a 'prize' as men seek to gain possession of her is vividly realised - the heroine is never free; her fate is always determined by the agency of men." "The Betrothed is a problem novel in that it was deeply disliked by Scott's printer and publisher who forced significant changes. What Scott was required to do to meet their objections has been confronted for the first time in this, the first critical edition of the novel."--Jacket.

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"A leading figure in Italian Romanticism and the Risorgimento, Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) is best known for The Betrothed, a historical novel set in northern Italy in the early seventeenth century. Although the success of this monumental novel eclipsed his reputation as a playwright, Manzoni himself prominently placed his two verse tragedies, The Count of Carmagnola (1820) and Adelchis (1822), at the beginning of a volume of his complete works, emphasizing their personal significance in his oeuvre. Both dramas reflect Manzoni's lifelong passion for history and confirm Georg Lukacs's assessment of Manzoni as "the most important exponent of historical drama at the time in Western Europe."" "Adelchis, set at the end of the eighth century, describes the events that led to the fall of the Lombard Kingdom under the joint reign of Desiderius and his son Adelchis. The Count of Carmagnola chronicles the conflict between the title character, a fiery Renaissance general, and the Republic of Venice. In his enthusiastic review of The Count of Carmagnola, Goethe congratulated Manzoni for "having abandoned the old rules and made such serious and firm progress on the new path that one can now form new rules on the model of this work."" "Now, translator Federica Brunori Deigan presents lyrical English-language versions of these two tragedies which, taken together, dramatize the first two epochs in Manzoni's "history of Italy." (The Betrothed completes the triptych, illustrating the period of Spanish domination.) Long unavailable in English, The Count of Carmagnola and Adelchis are distinguished by their dramatic power and thematic gravity. Manzoni considers the interactions of Christian morals and Machiavellian politics through deft psychological portraiture, ultimately revealing the course of history as a fabric woven by individuals free will according to a logical pattern of actions and reactions, within the vaster providential plan, that human eyes can only dimly perceive."--BOOK JACKET.

Volume 2 of 2

"Alessandro Manzoni was a giant of nineteenth-century European literature whose I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1928) is ranked with War and Peace as marking the summit of the historical novel. Manzoni wrote "Del romanzo storico" ("On the Historical Novel") during the twenty years he spent revising I promessi sposi. This first English translation of On the Historical Novel reflects the insights of a great craftsman and the misgivings of a profound thinker. It brings up to the nineteenth century the long war between poetry and history, tracing the idea of the historical novel from its origins in classical antiquity. It declares the historical novel - and presumably I promessi sposi itself - dead as a genre. Or perhaps it justifies I promessi sposi as the climax of a genre and the end of a stage of human consciousness. Its importance lies in its prospective and retrospective contributions to literary debate."--BOOK JACKET.