Romola (Penguin Classics)

Product Information

Bonaparte, Felicia. 1979. The Triptych and the Cross: The Central Myths of George Eliot’s Poetic Imagination. New York: New York University Press. a b Nestor, Pauline (2002). George Eliot. Critical Issues. Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave. pp. 96–8. ISBN 0-333-72201-9. Literary scholars have drawn comparisons between the setting of the novel and George Eliot's contemporary Victorian England: "Philosophically confused, morally uncertain, and culturally uprooted, [Florence] was a prototype of the upheaval of nineteenth-century England". [2] Both Renaissance Florence and Victorian England were times of philosophical, religious and social turbulence. Renaissance Florence was therefore a convenient setting for a historical novel that allowed exotic characters and events to be examined in Victorian fashion.

The novel first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 (vol. 6, no. 31) to August 1863 (vol. 8, no. 44), and was first published as a book, in three volumes, by Smith, Elder & Co. in 1863. A great leap into the open-endedness of another human being” is the striking image Clare Carlisle uses to describe marriage at the opening of her perceptive and suggestive book. Throughout European fiction of the 19th century – Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Hedda Gabler – the risk of catastrophe following that leap is a persistent theme, in which badly matched women become imprisoned victims of an institution that legally restricts their rights and threatens social scandal if they betray its code. Romola was the only George Eliot novel illustrated in its first edition, and this gallery, curated in collaboration with the George Eliot Archive, features the original illustrations by Sir Frederic Leighton. Eliot had requested that a talented artist illustrate the novel, and Leighton was known for his historical genre paintings, especially his Florentine Renaissance scenes. He seemed an ideal illustrator for a novel set in fifteenth-century Florence. While Eliot was pleased with his work overall, there were some conflicts. At one point, she wrote to Leighton, "I am quite convinced that illustrations can only form a sort of overture to the text" (Barrington 1906, 4: 55-56). We invite you to consider the relationship between text and image-- as well as the relationship between an author and an artist corresponding throughout the installments of a serial publication-- and we offer this gallery as an artifact for multi-disciplinary inquiries in Victorian studies.Romola is the fourth of Eliot’s full-length novels. It is set in Florence between the death of Lorenzo de Medici in April 1492 and the execution of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola for heresy in May 1498. Thus, it takes in the first turbulent years of a republican government under Savonarola after 60 years of autocratic government by the Medicis, and Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494. Romola, the hero and amanuensis of her blind scholarly father, marries an opportunistic rogue and ends up isolated when her love for him turns to contempt and she furthermore loses trust in Savonarola. The discovery of duty in self-sacrifice is her solace. sceptic, Matteo Franco, who wants hotter sauce than any of us.’‘Because he has a strong opinion of himself,’ flashes out Luigi, Rufus Sewell as Will Ladislaw in the 1994 TV adaptation of Middlemarch. Photograph: Shaun Higson/Culture/Alamy If you only read one, it should be That the writing of Romola cost the author much we have from her own testimony: “I took unspeakable pains in preparing to write Romola — neglecting nothing that I could find that would help me to what I may call the “idiom” of Florence, in the largest sense one could stretch the world to.” The psychological and religious introspection seen in Eliot's other novels is also seen in Romola. Richard Hutton, writing in The Spectator, in 1863, observed that "[t]he greatest artistic purpose of the story is to trace out the conflict between liberal culture and the more passionate form of the Christian faith in that strange era, which has so many points of resemblance with the present". [4] The spiritual journey undertaken by the title character in some ways emulates Eliot's own religious struggle. In Romola, the title character has a non-religious and scholarly, yet insular, upbringing. She is gradually exposed to the wider religious world, which impacts her life at fortuitous moments. Yet continued immersion in religious life highlights its incompatibility with her own virtues, and by the end of the story she has adopted a humanist, empathic middle ground. [5] Literary significance and criticism [ edit ]

Attracted to the lovely, grave Romola, Tito spends many hours reading and writing manuscripts with her blind father. One day, when Tito has the opportunity to be alone with Romola for a moment, he declares his love to her, and Romola shyly confesses her love for him. That same day, Monna Brigida pays a call on her cousin Bardo. When she accidentally mentions the name of a Dominican monk, Dino, Tito discovers that the lost son of Bardo is not dead; rather, he has been banished from his father’s house. Tito realizes that Fra Luca is Dino, and he fears exposure of his benefactor’s slavery. He feels the time is right for him to ask the old man for permission to marry Romola; he does so, and Bardo readily consents to the marriage. Spittles, Brian (1993). George Eliot: Godless Woman. Basingstoke, Hampshire; London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 0-333-57218-1.The final blow comes to Romola when her godfather, Bernardo Del Nero, the only person in the world she still loves, is arrested for helping the Medicis in their plotting to return to Florence. Romola knows that Tito has been a spy for both political factions; he has gained his own safety by betraying others. Romola reveals to Tito her knowledge of Baldassare’s story and the truth of the old man’s accusations against him. Romola tries to prevent Bernardo’s execution by pleading with Savonarola to intervene and gain his release, but the preacher refuses. Disillusioned and sorrowful over her godfather’s death, Tito’s betrayals, and Savonarola’s falseness, Romola leaves Florence to seek a new life. This edition in Senate House Library is from Bernhard Tauchnitz’s Collection of British Authors, a series begun in 1841 ‘to promote the literary interest of my Anglo-Saxon cousins, by rendering English literature as universally known as possible beyond the limits of the British Empire’. Eliot appeared in the Tauchnitz series in the 1860s alongside Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, Margaret Oliphant, Mrs Henry Wood and other popular writers.