I promessi sposi
Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters - the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister 'Unnamed' - in their struggle to be reunited. A vigorous portrayal of enduring passion, The Betrothed's exploration of love, power and faith presents a whirling panorama of seventeenth-century Italian life and is one of the greatest European historical novels.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
5people
2019–2022years
40% recommend40% neutral20% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- In Italy that happens with Dante’s Divina Commedia and Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi. Very good reads on their own, they get absolutely destroyed by being forced on kids.
- For other HNers out there: I Promessi Sposi really is a great book. If you are looking for something to read this summer, I'd really reccomend it.
- > Italy isn’t exactly far from Africa
yep... but there a thing called the sea between them
> Africans were part of the Roman Empire
1400 years before Pinocchio times
> Othello was based on an Italian story
In Venice, set 400 years before Pinocchio.
Where Pinocchio lived and where Collodi set the story there were no black people in ~1850s
Not that some black person couldn't be found in Florence, but Pinocchio is set in a small village where people knew each other and didn't travel far from home.
People mostly lived a self segregated life.
There's a reason why there aren't many popular Italian books of the time including black people, they were not a numerous presence.
I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed from Manzoni) it's probably the most popular Italian novel ever, it was written around the same time of Pinocchio and is set in Milan in 1630s during the plague and the Spanish rule.
There isn't a single black person mentioned in the ~600 pages that make the book.
- I don't agree with you, as italian we read for example in school a story I think is also famous in other parts of the world, "I promessi sposi" like it's translated as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Betrothed_(Manzoni_novel), and there are described at a certain point confinements for the plague, also I've read about confined city for epidemics of smallpox, so I don't think it is about modern society, I think it's more about the numbers and death rate of disease..
- I don't even have to think about it:
"That branch of the Lake of Como, which turns toward the south between two unbroken chains of mountains, presenting to the eye a succession of bays and gulfs, formed by their jutting and retiring ridges, suddenly contracts itself between a headland to the right and an extended sloping bank on the left, and assumes the flow and appearance of a river."
That's the beginning of "I Promessi Sposi" (The Bethrothed) which is one of the most important books of italian literature, and IMO has one of the worst incipits ever written.
And I feel the 1834 english version[0] is actually more readable than the original.
[0] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35155/35155-h/35155-h.htm
