Scaramouche (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Softcover

Sabatini, Rafael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593082428 ISBN 13: 9781593082420

Verlag: BARNES & NOBLE INC, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RScaramouche&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RRafael Sabatini&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&R&&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R: &&LDIV&&R

• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading
• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics &&L/I&&Rpulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R &&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&RRaised by a supposed "godfather," Andre-Louis Moreau knows nothing about his background or his real parents—not even his real name. All he knows is that he wants vengeance against the vicious, arrogant aristocrat who brutally murdered his best friend. As France plummets into revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, Moreaus journey toward revenge takes him through several careers, from lawyer to fugitive to actor and playwright—and eventually to member of the French National Assembly. Hiding with a troupe of itinerant actors, he gleefully plays the traditional Commedia Dell-Arte role of Scaramouche, the trouble-making trickster who, like Shakespeares fools and jesters, speaks painful truths disguised as harmless comedy. &&LP&&R&&LSTRONG&&RRafael Sabatini&&L/B&&R was a twentieth-century Alexandre Dumas: a masterful creator of swashbuckling historical romances. Mixing real people with fictional characters and actual events with invented ones, Sabatini drew vivid, accurately detailed pictures of revolution-addled France. In Scaramouche, he turns a sweeping adventure epic into a subtle psychological study, as Moreaus odyssey gradually becomes less about revenge than about self-discovery.&&L/P&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LSTRONG&&RIncludes 8 pieces of original art.&&L/B&&R&&LBR&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LB&&RJohn D. Cloy, Ph.D.&&L/B&&R, is Bibliographer for the Humanities at the University of Mississippi Libraries. He is the author of &&LI&&RPensive Jester: The Literary Career of W.W. Jacobs&&L/I&&R (University Press of America, 1996) and &&LI&&RMuscular Mirth: Barry Pain and the New Humor&&L/I&&R (University of Victoria Press, 2003), as well as various articles on turn-of-the-century English literature and humor, comparative literature, and British short fiction.&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John D. Cloy, Ph.D., is Bibliographer for the Humanities at the University of Mississippi Libraries. He is the author of Pensive Jester: The Literary Career of W.W. Jacobs (University Press of America, 1996) and Muscular Mirth: Barry Pain and the New Humor (University of Victoria Press, 2003), as well as various articles on turn-of-the-century English literature and humor, comparative literature, and British short fiction.

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From John Cloy’s Introduction to Scaramouche

When Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution was published in 1921, he was already an established author, with a dozen books to his credit. This swashbuckling novel, set during the French Revolution, won him an even larger audience and made him a tidy sum of money. Hailed as the new Dumas” by his admirers, the author was welcomed by lovers of action literature, historical fiction, and period stories. The novel was initially turned down by several publishers before being accepted by London publisher Hutchinson, who happily watched it sell hundreds of thousands of copies (the American publisher was Houghton Mifflin).Scaramouche was instrumental in resurrecting a flagging literary genre, the historical novel. Although historical fiction had enjoyed a brief rebirth during the years of World War I (probably because of a widespread demand for escapist literature), its vogue had quickly faded as soon as the conflict ended.

Perhaps the popularity of that relatively new medium, the movie, contributed to Sabatini’s success with this somewhat unfashionable literary form.Scaramouche was made into several films, one starring box office idols Stewart Granger and Janet Leigh. The writer’s well-crafted prose, his meticulous historical research, fluency in at least six languages, cosmopolitan background, and singular ability to tell a story in an interesting manner probably, however, played a bigger role in his success. Markedly different from the productions of Modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce (who essentially abandoned straightforward narrative for a more internalized, mental approach to fictional presentation that basically ignored chronological constraints), Sabatini’s historical novels continued to sell during the period between the wars when the fortunes of other purveyors of historical fiction were generally at a low ebb.

Sabatini’s upbringing was certainly a contributing factor to his ability to write historical fiction. He was born in 1875 in Jesi, in central Italy, the son of opera singers. His father, Vincenzo Sabatini, was an Italian, while his mother, Anna Trafford, was of English stock. Rafael learned the rudiments of English as a child from his mother but did not master the language until he went to England as a teenager. He was exposed at a young age to Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, all of which he spoke and wrote with facility. His schooling consisted of a year at the Lycée of Oporto, Portugal, where his parents had settled as music teachers, and several more years in Switzerland at the École Cantonale in Zoug. The young Sabatini’s years on the European mainland, with its crumbling castles, historical battlefields, and multicultural, often colorful populace, instilled in him a deep interest in history and reading that he never outgrew. A habit of omnivorous reading that he developed early in life built the framework for the painstaking research practices that he so fruitfully brought to bear on his historical novels.

Although Sir Walter Scott was not the first to compose historical fiction, any discussion of the subject brings his name to the forefront. Horace Walpole’sThe Castle of Otranto (1764) is generally considered the first historical novel, this position justified by the author’s enthusiasm for period-era scenery like musty old castles and chivalric romance. A broadly accepted contemporary definition of romance,” as set forth in Clara Reeve’s The Progress of Romance (1785), is a narrative set in the past, as opposed to the novel that is set in the present. Scott and those who followed him generally adhered to this tenet (Drabble,The Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 482; see For Further Reading”). Scott’s fictional principles are laid out in the prefaces to his various novels. He viewed history as a subject that was repulsively dry and sought to present to his readers the spirit of historical events enlivened by fictional embellishments. He usually chose to present ordinary people as his protagonists and used actual historical figures as marginalia, almost as props for greater realism. Thus the writer attempted to remain true to both disciplines, history and literature. Scott took wide latitude with his historical facts and often strayed from the factual recordsas when he portrayed the Saxons as ascendant inIvanhoe (by that period the Normans actually had the upper hand). In his Scottish novels, he frequently altered details of English history to suit his purpose, which was to portray the spirit of Scotland and its struggles with realism and truth and without maudlin sentiment or overindulgence in rote recital of primary material, but not without creativity. Scott held that an imagination in the service of truth was superior to the antiquarian mode of history (Orel,The Historical Novel from Scott to Sabatini, pp. 614). He was often attacked by contemporary critics, although his books have survived and are still read. This longevity can be considered the ultimate test of literary merit.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: BARNES & NOBLE INC
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1593082428
• ISBN 13: 9781593082420
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar