I Promessi Sposi / The Betrothed
“>
Autor:
Alessandro Manzoni
Country:
Italy (IT)
Book Theme:
European writers “without borders”
Publisher:
Einaudi Scuola
Publishing Year:
2022
Italian poet and novelist whose novel The Betrothed had immense patriotic appeal for Italians of the nationalistic Risorgimento period. After Manzoni’s parents separated, he spent much of his childhood in religious schools. In 1805 he joined his mother and her lover in Paris, where he moved in radical circles and became a convert to Voltairian skepticism. His anticlerical poem “Il trionfo della libertà” demonstrates his independence of thought. In 1808 he married Henriette Blondel, a Calvinist, who soon converted to Roman Catholicism, and two years later Manzoni himself returned to Catholicism. He wrote (1812–15) a series of religious poems, The Sacred Hymns, on the church feasts of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and a hymn to Mary. The last “La pentecoste,” was published in 1822.
National Award for Children’s and Young People’s
Abstract
The Betrothed is a famous historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni, preceded by Fermo and Lucia, often considered a novel in its own right, it was published in a first version
between 1825 and 1827; later revised by the same author,especially in language, was republished in the final version between 1840 and 1842. It is set between 1628 and 1630 in Lombardy, during the Spanish conquest . Don Abbondio the priest of a small town on Lake Como, is in view of celebrating the wedding of Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella of which
Don Rodrigo was infatuated and requires the priest not to celebrate the wedding. The
two, after trying to get married, ask Fra Cristoforo for help and he advises them to
leave the country. Lucia and her mother Agnese go to Monza and Renzo goes to Milan. Don Rodrigo has Lucia kidnapped by the Unnamed, another bossy man and broken to all crimes. After being kidnapped, Lucia seeks comfort in prayer and invokes the Madonna saying that she would even give up marrying Renzo to be alone
for her. But the sight of the girl so unjustly tormented and the arrival of Cardinal Borromeo provoke a crisis of conscience to the murderous obscurity: instead of delivering the girl to Don Rodrigo, the Innominato sets her free. Meanwhile, Renzo arrived in Milan while the rioters for the famine and, mistaken for one of the leaders of the revolt, is forced to flee to Bergamo. Lombardy is torn by war and plague, but Renzo returns to Milan to look for his girlfriend. He finds Lucia in a lazaretto
together with Fra Cristoforo who treats the sick, among whom, abandoned by all, Don Rodrigo dies. Renzo is happy because he is finally close to his beloved. But the problem is that Lucia had made a vow to the Madonna and consequently not to break the promise intervenes between Cristoforo saying that the vow made at a time of
crisis is not valid so the friar dissolves the promise made by Lucia. After so many vicissitudes Renzo and Lucia can finally become husband and wife.
