The Italian Readalong: Week I

By -
I've now read the first 9 chapters in The Italian, and I'm quite enjoying it, how about you?  I have questions:

Is the mysterious monk who warns Vivaldi also Schedoni, or is it a different monk?

You know Ellena is going to turn out to be high-born; what will her family history be?

Vivaldi may be the most sensitive hero I've ever read about.  He is wonderfully high-minded and noble.  And I rather like Ellena--she's intelligent, which isn't as common in a heroine as I would like.  Of course, Vivaldi  falls in love at first sight, but you can't have a hero going around getting to know girls before he falls for them, that wouldn't be right.  Ellena actually seems to take a little longer, which is interesting to me.

Mrs. Radcliffe, as far as I can see, seems to have had a thing about monks and nuns and priests.  Are there any nice monks in any Radcliffe novels?  So far we have just one nice nun, and I don't think she's there by choice.  It's a great example of the English distrust and fear of Roman Catholicism, at least. 

I'm enjoying Schedoni's character.  He gets quite a lot of description, doesn't he?  Such as these:

...he seldom perceived truth when it lay on the surface; he could follow it through all the labyrinths of disquisition, but overlooked it, when it was undisguised before him. In fact he cared not for truth, nor sought it by bold and broad argument, but loved to exert the wily cunning of his nature in hunting it through artificial perplexities. At length, from a habit of intricacy and suspicion, his vitiated mind could receive nothing for truth, which was simple and easily comprehended. (p. 34)
He regarded Vivaldi as a rash boy, who was swayed only by his passions; but while he suffered deep resentment for the evil in his character, he felt neither respect nor kindness for the good, for the sincerity, the love of justice, the generosity, which threw a brilliancy even on his foibles. Schedoni, indeed, saw only evil in human nature. (p. 52)

 Are you on schedule with your reading?  How are you liking the book so far?  Are you wondering how the story is going to stretch out for 300+ more pages?  Because I am.

Comments

  1. TeresaOctober 6, 2012 at 10:37 AM

    I just finished reading the chapters for this week!
    I'm surprised because, some years ago, I tried to read 'The Mysteries of Udolfo' and I was unable to finish it, and with 'The Italian' I'm not having any kind of trouble.
    The first chapters – aka. Vivaldi meets Ellena – are a bit cheesy and all the exaltation of their feelings it was a bit too much for me. Actually, Vivaldi annoys me a bit with all his reasoning and, well, all his doubts surrounding Schedoni. I don't know if I'm explaining myself too well. Anyway, I'm glad he doesn't even for a second think of the consequences of marrying Ellena, he doesn't seem to care about his father disowning him.
    I like Ellena best. Her determination, strength and will.Especially after she is locked with the nuns, and I'm especially curious about what she'd have to endure if she refuses the options that the Marchesa has offered her. Olivia did sound very scared about it, as she had suffered it herself? I'm sure there must be some kind of relation between Ellena and Olivia, I feel it.
    And Schedoni... I still can't make up my mind on whether he is or not the monk. I hope he isn't, that would be a nice turn of events. And, anyway,if he was the mysterious man, why would he warn him?
    I'm intrigued!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanOctober 6, 2012 at 4:24 PM

    I'm sure you're right about Olivia and Ellena. And I agree that I hope Mystery Monk isn't Schedoni--Vivaldi may have a loving heart but I'm not sure that he's all that bright.

    I too am finding the book easier to read than I expected. Maybe I've just gotten better at reading 18th-century writing! I read Udolpho when I was about 20 and it was not easy going.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lindsey SparksOctober 7, 2012 at 7:08 PM

    I finished volume 1 and am enjoying it, although I actually liked Udolpho better, at least so far. I really like Udolpho though! That's a good point about this showing the English distrust of the Catholics. It is a bit hard to find good monks and nuns in most of English literature. I'm curious about Olivia as well. I bet she's Ellena's mother or something like that. Here is my post on the first volume: http://lindseysparks.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-italian-week-1.html.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more