Valperga (novel)

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Front cover of the second volume by Valperga

Valperga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca is an 1823 novel by the British author Mary Shelley . Mary Shelley's original title is now the subtitle of the novel. The name "Valperga" was chosen by her father William Godwin , who between 1821 and February 1823 prepared his daughter's story for publication. His revision underlines the importance of the female protagonist and shortens the novel somewhat.

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Valperga is a historical novel that tells the experiences of the condottiere and Duke of Lucca, Castruccio Castracani . Castracani was ruler of Lucca and briefly conquered Florence. In the novel, his army threatens the fictional fortress Valperga, which is ruled by the Countess Euthanasia. It's the woman he's in love with. He forces her to choose between her feelings for him and her political freedom. She chooses political freedom and with it her own death at the same time.

Aspects

The radical romantic Mary Shelley actually addresses a topic of post-Napoleonic Europe in her novel, which is set in the Middle Ages. It is about the rights of communities in the face of imperialist powers. Mary Shelley rejects Castruccio's will to power, which is characterized as male, and describes a female alternative in Euthanasia's rule over Valperga, which is based on reason and understanding. According to the youngest editor of Valperga , Stuart Curran, Mary Shelley's novel is a feminine answer to the historical novel founded by Walter Scott , which is mostly a masculine view of history. With this novel, contemporary literary scholars repeatedly demonstrate Mary Shelley's fundamentally republican views and her interest in questions of morality in politics.

reception

Valperga was welcomed when it appeared, but mostly understood as a love story. The underlying confrontation with a current political issue at the time of publication was overlooked. The novel was published only once during Mary Shelley's lifetime, and she later noted that the novel had never been given "fair chances". Today's literary scholars appreciate the novel's well-considered narrative structure and its authentic depth of detail. As part of her work on the novel, Mary Shelley carried out extensive historical studies and visited the locations of the plot.

proof

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rossington, Introduction to Valperga , xv; Curran, 103.
  2. ↑ Curran, 108-11.
  3. ^ Rossington, Introduction to Valperga , xii.
  4. ↑ Curran, 106-07.
  5. ^ Bennett, An Introduction , 60.
  6. ^ Bennett, An Introduction , 60-61.
  7. ↑ Curran, 104-06. Mary Shelley

literature

  • Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 080185976X .
  • Bennett, Betty T. Machiavelli's and Mary Shelley's Castruccio: Biography as Metaphor . Romanticism 3.2 (1997): 139-51.
  • Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck ". The Evidence of the Imagination . Eds. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978.
  • Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery" . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. ISBN 0877453977 .
  • Brewer, William D. "Mary Shelley's Valperga : The Triumph of Euthanasia's Mind". European Romantic Review 5.2 (1995): 133-48.
  • Carson, James P. "A Sigh of Many Hearts": History, Humanity, and Popular Culture in Valperga ". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein": Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth . Eds. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
  • Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. ISBN 0198112203 .
  • Curran, Stuart. " Valperga ". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley . Ed. Esther Schor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521007704 .
  • Lew, Joseph W. "God's Sister: History and Ideology in Valperga ". The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Eds. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: New York University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195077407 .
  • O'Sullivan, Barbara Jane. "Beatrice in Valperga : A New Cassandra". The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Eds. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: New York University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195077407 .
  • Lokke, Kari. "Children of Liberty: Idealist Historiography in Staël, Shelley, and Sand". PMLA 118.3 (2003): 502-20.
  • Lokke, Kari. "Sibylline Leaves: Mary Shelley's Valperga and the Legacy of Corinne ". Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature . Ed. Gregory Maertz, Gregory. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.
  • Poovey, Mary . The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. ISBN 0226675289 .
  • Rajan, Rilottama. "Between Romance and History: Possibility and Contingency in Godwin, Leibniz, and Mary Shelley's Valperga ". Mary Shelley in Her Times . Eds. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
  • Rossington, Michael. "Future Uncertain: The Republican Tradition and its Destiny in Valperga ". Mary Shelley in Her Times . Eds. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
  • Schiefelbein, Michael. "The Lessons of True Religion: Mary Shelley's Tribute to Catholicism in Valperga ". Religion and Literature 30.2 (1998): 59-79.
  • Shelley, Mary . Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca . Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. ISBN 0192832891 .
  • Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca . The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley . Vol. 3rd ed. Nora Crook. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996.
  • Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality . 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. ISBN 0801842182 .
  • Wake, Ann M. Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck ". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein": Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth . Eds. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
  • White, Daniel E. "The God Undeified: Mary Shelley's Valperga , Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire". Romanticism on the Net 6 (Mary 1997).
  • Williams, John. "Translating Mary Shelly's Valperga into English: Historical Romance, Biography or Gothic Fiction?". European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange, 1760-1960 . Ed. Avril Horner. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.