The Charterhouse of Parma (World's Classics) - Softcover

Stendhal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192831836 ISBN 13: 9780192831835

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 1997

Synopsis

The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) is a compelling novel of passion and daring, of prisons and heroic escape, of political chicanery and sublime personal courage. Set at the beginning of the nineteenth century, amidst the golden landscapes of northern Italy, it traces the joyous but ill-starred amorous exploits of a handsome young aristocrat called Fabrice del Dongo, and of his incomparable aunt Gina, her suitor Prime Minister Mosca, and Cl 'elia, a heroine of ethereal beauty and earthly passion. These characters are rendered unforgettable by Stendhal's remarkable gift for psychological insight. `Never before have the hearts of princes, ministers, courtiers, and women been depicted like this,' wrote Honor 'e de Balzac. `Stendhal's tableau has the dimensions of a fresco but the precision of the Dutch masters.' The great achievement of The Charterhouse of Parma is to conjure up the excitement and romance of youth while never losing sight of the harsh realities which beset the pursuit of happiness, nor the humour and patient irony with which these must be viewed. This book is intended for first to third-year undergraduate and postgraduate students of French literature, realism in 19th-century literature, history and literature.

About this title

Review:

"The Charterhouse of Parma has never sparkled in English with such radiance as it does in Richard Howard's new translation."
--Edmund White

"[A] superb new translation."
--Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books

"An epic tale of war, love, sex, politics, and religion...an action-packed narrative."
--The New Yorker

About the Author:

Henri Marie Beyle, known through his writing as Stendhal, was born in Grenoble in 1783 and educated there at the Ecole Centrale. A cousin offered him a post in the Ministry of War, and from 1800 he followed Napoleon's campaigns in Italy, Germany, Russia and Austria. In between wars, he spent his time in Paris drawing rooms and theatres.After the fall of Napoleon, he retired to Italy, adopted his pseudonym and started to write books on Italian painting, Haydn and Mozart, and travels in Italy. In 1821 the Austrian police expelled him from the country, and on returning to Paris he finished his book De l'amour. This was followed by Racine et Shakespeare, a defense of Romantic literature. Le Rouge et le noir was his second novel, and he also produced or began three others, including La Chartreuse de Parme and Lucien Leuwen. None of his published works was received with any great understanding during his lifetime.
Beyle was appointed Consul at Civitavecchia after the 1830 revolution, but his health deteriorated and six years later he was back in Paris and beginning A Life of Napoleon. In 1841 he was once again recalled for reasons of illness, and in the following year suffered a fatal stroke. Various autobiographical works, Journal, Souvenirs de l'egotisme and La Vie de Henri Brulard, were published later, as his fame grew.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0192831836
• ISBN 13: 9780192831835
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 545