Romola - George Eliot (week 4)

This meetup is hosted by Wisdom and Woe. For more details and to sign up for this event, go to: https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/310036369

Romola (1862) is one of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative works: sworn by Eliot herself to be "written with [her] best blood"; admired by Robert Browning as "the noblest and most heroic prose poem" he had ever read; and vivid with historical, political, and geographical details that are "wonderful in their energy and in their accuracy" (Anthony Trollope).

It offers an in-depth perspective of the artistic, philosophical, religious, and social life of Renaissance Florence, featuring a cast of real-world figures such as Piero di Cosimo, Fra Angelico, and Niccolò Machiavelli. The novel begins in 1492, just as Italy is entering one of its most turbulent historical periods: including war, the exile of the Medici dynasty (famous for its luxuriance), and the ascendency of the religious zealot, Savonarola (famous for his austerity), harbingering Italy's proto-Protestant Reformation.

In this crucible is introduced the heroine, Romola, a naive youth seeking to define herself. A mysterious shipwreck survivor, Tito Melema, arrives in Florence seeking to redefine himself. The two are soon married, but Tito is haunted by a dark past. Swirled in national and marital intrigues of Shakespearean dimensions, Romola confronts crises of faith and virtue, loyalty and resistance.

Schedule:

• Week 1 (August 17): Introduction-Chapter 14
• Week 2 (August 24): Chapters 15-33
• Week 3 (August 31): Chapters 34-51
• Week 4 (September 7): Chapters 52-Epilogue

Wisdom and Woe is a philosophy and literature discussion group dedicated to exploring the world, work, life, and times of Herman Melville and the 19th century Romantic movement. The group is free and open to anybody with an interest in learning and growing by "diving deeper" into "time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters."