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Cargando... Rienzipor Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This book is probably the first one I read following an automatic recommendation found on LT. And I rather enjoyed it, except that the copy I bought from e-Bay—and printed in 1848—used a 2-column type-setting and a very small font. But this is not Bulwer-Lytton's fault. One has to get accustomed to Bulwer-Lytton's prose, which can be confusing in the first pages. He can get tedious by his pomposity at times, and I avow that some chapters, especially in the first part of the book, are very slow. But in the middle of all this pomposity and slowness, I found very nice sentences which would be worth to read aloud, for their rythm and sonority. When Bulwer-Lytton describes knights defying themselves and throwing gages, I had the impression to read lines from Shakespeare's Richard The Second. A most interesting passage is the description of plague in Florence in the mid 14c. It was of special interest to me because I read Rienzi just after having read Pepys's Diary 1665 where Pepys describes the plague epidemy in London that year. There are quite similar statements, for instance the common belief that good humour and cheerfulness were a protection against the disease. I wonder if Bulwer-Lytton could have been inspired by the first edition of Pepys's Diary which was probably published at the time Rienzi was composed... The book ends up in an apocalysm that could have been written by Wagner himself—but he made an opera of it, after all. The whole story could have also made a good movie, at least in the peplum era, some 40 years ago. As a whole, the book is extremely instructive about the state of Italy at the end of the Middle Ages. And after having read it, I still cannot understand why Bulwer-Lytton continues to be so despised and unrecognized, his name being absolutely unknown to the French public, for instance. 'Tis more than an anomaly—'tis a shame. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las series editorialesEveryman's Library (532)
Classic text republished as an e-book. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.8Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Victorian period 1837-1900Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Still keeping B-L's basic style, about half the text could have been excised for modern readers. I hope someone will do this someday, giving this novel a chance at more exposure. The long boring digressions explaining history or quoting from earlier writers could have been done away with, or at least abbreviated. B-L also included an interesting essay on the historical Cola di Rienzi, who was considered in the 19th century as a nationalist figure during the Risorgimento.
Recommended as a Victorian period piece about a fascinating period of history. ( )