Romola - George Eliot (week 3)

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

Romola:

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Google books
• Librivox

Supplemental:

• Romola 1924 silent film adaptation
• Piero di Cosimo and Fra Angelico in Romola
• The Medici, Savonarola, and Renaissance Florence

Extracts:

• "If Savonarola’s zeal devout / But with the fagot’s flame died out; / If Leopardi, stoned by Grief, / A young St. Stephen of the Doubt, / Might merit well the martyr’s leaf; / In these if passion held her claim, / Let Celio pass, of breed the same" (Clarel, 1.14)
• "Had it been later in time, one would think that the Pope had in mind Fra Angelico’s seraphs, some of whom, plucking apples in gardens of the Hesperides, have the faint rosebud complexion of the more beautiful English girls." (Billy Budd, 24)
• "Such notes, translated into hues, / Thy wall, Angelico, suffuse, / Whose tender pigments melt from view— / Die down, die out, as sunsets do." (Clarel, 1.18)
• "Hals says, Angelico sighed to Durer, / Taking to heart his desperate case, / “Would, friend, that Paradise might allure her!” / If Fra Angelico so could wish" ("Marquis de Grandvin at the Hostelry")

This meetup is part of the series The Risorgimento.