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Book The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova

Download or read book The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova written by Giacomo Casanova and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Casanova s Life and Times

Download or read book Casanova s Life and Times written by David John Thompson and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is both the life of Giacomo Casanova and a chronicle of eighteenth-century Europe. Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was born the son of a moderately poor acting family at a time when the stage carried enormous social stigma. Yet in his own lifetime he achieved celebrity across Europe, rubbing shoulders with numerous of the eighteenth century's greatest men and women, from Frederick the Great to Catherine the Great, from Voltaire to Albrecht von Haller, from Pope Benedict XIV to Pope Clement XIII. It was a fame that had little to do with his romantic exploits. This was to come later, following upon the posthumous publication of his magnificent History of My Life. An adventurer and a man of learning, his was an extraordinary life whose story was intertwined with the story of eighteenth-century Europe. To try to understand this fascinating character we need also to try to understand the period in which he lived. This is the aim of Casanova's Life and Times.

Book Casanova

    Book Details:
  • Author : Laurence Bergreen
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2016-11-01
  • ISBN : 1476716528
  • Pages : 544 pages

Download or read book Casanova written by Laurence Bergreen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Sexy, surprising, funny, insightful, and wildly entertaining” (Huffington Post)—the definitive biography of Giacomo Casanova, the impoverished boy who became the famous writer, notorious libertine, and self-invented genius in decadent eighteenth-century Europe. Today, “Casanova” is a synonym for “great lover,” yet the real story of this remarkable figure is little known. A figure straight out of a Henry Fielding novel, Giacomo Casanova was erotic, brilliant, impulsive, and desperate for recognition; a self-destructive genius. Over the course of his lifetime, he claimed to have seduced more than one hundred women, among them married women, young women in convents, girls just barely in their teens, women of high and low birth alike. Abandoned by his mother, an actress and courtesan, Casanova was raised by his illiterate grandmother, coming of age in a Venice filled with spies and political intrigue. He was intellectually curious and read forbidden books, for which he was jailed. He staged a dramatic escape from Venice’s notorious prison, I Piombi, the only person known to have done so. He then fled to France, ingratiated himself at the royal court, and invented the national lottery that still exists to this day. He crisscrossed Europe, landing for a while in St. Petersburg, where he was admitted to the court of Catherine the Great. He corresponded with Voltaire and met Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte—assisting them as they composed the timeless opera Don Giovanni. And he wrote what many consider the greatest memoir of the era, the twelve-volume Story of My Life. Laurence Bergreen’s Casanova recounts this astonishing life in rich, intimate detail, and at the same time, paints a dazzling portrait of eighteenth-century Europe, filled with a cast characters from serving girls to kings and courtiers, “great fun for any history lover” (Kirkus Reviews).

Book The Story of My Escape

Download or read book The Story of My Escape written by Giacomo Casanova and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe's greatest adventurer. Thrown into an escape-proof prison for a crime he probably committed. The question is, which crime? In 1755, the infamous Giacomo Casanova was locked up without trial in Venice's notorious Leads prison. Over 15 months he battled disease, madness, boredom, grotesque gaolers, bad books and fellow prisoners, before attempting the most audacious and typically flamboyant escape in history. This is Casanova's own account of the escape bid that made him a celebrity across Europe, full of his unique wit and philosophy, translated into English in full for the first time.

Book Casanova s Women

Download or read book Casanova s Women written by Judith Summers and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive profile of the eighteenth-century Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova, whose name has become a synonym for seduction, looks at history's most famous lover from a female perspective, throwing light on a dangerous and beguiling man, as seen through the eyes of the women who loved him.

Book Paolina s Innocence

    Book Details:
  • Author : Larry Wolff
  • Publisher : Stanford University Press
  • Release : 2012-10-10
  • ISBN : 0804782105
  • Pages : 328 pages

Download or read book Paolina s Innocence written by Larry Wolff and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-10 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1785, in the city of Venice, a wealthy 60-year-old man was arrested and accused of a scandalous offense: having sexual relations with the 8-year-old daughter of an impoverished laundress. Although the sexual abuse of children was probably not uncommon in early modern Europe, it is largely undocumented, and the concept of "child abuse" did not yet exist. The case of Paolina Lozaro and Gaetano Franceschini came before Venice's unusual blasphemy tribunal, the Bestemmia, which heard testimony from an entire neighborhood—from the parish priest to the madam of the local brothel. Paolina's Innocence considers Franceschini's conduct in the context of the libertinism of Casanova and also employs other prominent contemporaries—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Carlo Goldoni, Lorenzo Da Ponte, Cesare Beccaria, and the Marquis de Sade—as points of reference for understanding the case and broader issues of libertinism, sexual crime, childhood, and child abuse in the 18th century.

Book The Orphan s Song

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lauren Kate
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2021-09-07
  • ISBN : 0735212589
  • Pages : 369 pages

Download or read book The Orphan s Song written by Lauren Kate and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical adult debut novel by # 1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Kate, The Orphan's Song is a breathtaking story of passion, heartbreak, and betrayal, and a celebration of the enduring nature and transformative power of love. "A tangled knot of betrayal and love, lies and redemption. Marvelous." --Fiona Davis, author of The Address A song brought them together. A secret will tear them apart. When Violetta and Mino meet, one finds true love and the other denies it. Both orphans at the Hospital of the Incurables in Venice, an orphanage and music conservatory, they meet and make music together clandestinely until Violetta is selected for the Incurables' renowned chorus. In order to join she signs an oath never to sing beyond the church doors, effectively sequestering herself for life. Mino flees, heartbroken. Too late, Violetta realizes what she has lost. In rebellion she begins a dangerous and forbidden nightlife, unknowingly drawing closer to Mino as he searches Venice for his long-lost mother. Mino and Violetta must each journey through passion, heartache, and betrayal before a dangerous secret reunites them, leading to a shocking and final confrontation.

Book Seduction

    Book Details:
  • Author : Clement Knox
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2020-02-04
  • ISBN : 1643133845
  • Pages : 577 pages

Download or read book Seduction written by Clement Knox and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliantly original history that explores the shifting cultural mores of courtship, told through the lives of remarkable women and men throughout history. If sex has generally been a private matter, seduction has always been of intense public interest. Whether the stuff of front-page tabloid news, the scandal of nineteenth-century American courts, or the stuff of literature across the eras, we are fascinated by stories of seduction and sex. In the first history of its kind, Clement Knox explores seduction in all its historical and cultural incarnations. Moving from the Garden of Eden to the carnivals of eighteenth-century Venice, and from the bawdy world of Georgian London to the saloons and speakeasies of the Jazz Age, this is an exploration of timeless themes of power, desire, and free will. Along the way we meet Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughter Mary Shelley, and her friend Caroline Norton, and reckon with their fight for women’s rights and freedoms. We encounter Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, who became entangled in America's labyrinthine and racialized seduction laws. We discover how tall tales of predatory vampires, hypnotists, and immigrants were mobilized by Nazis and nativists to help propel them to power. We consider how after seduction seemingly vanished from view during the Sexual Revolution, it exploded back into our lives as The Game became a multi-million bestseller, online dating swept the world, and the ongoing male fascinating with manipulating women was exposed. In a big-thinking cultural history told through an extraordinary range of stories and sources, Knox explores how our ideas about desire and pursuit have developed in step with the modern world. This is a bold, modern charter of seduction, from the birth of the Enlightenment to the explosion of romantic literature and right up to our contemporary moments of reckoning around “incel” culture and #MeToo.

Book Casanova in the Enlightenment

    Book Details:
  • Author : Malina Stefanovska
  • Publisher : University of Toronto Press
  • Release : 2020-12-16
  • ISBN : 1487506643
  • Pages : 187 pages

Download or read book Casanova in the Enlightenment written by Malina Stefanovska and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book interrogates the enduring and controversial legend of Casanova, from a seducer of women to a man of science and key participant in the Enlightenment.

Book History of My Life

Download or read book History of My Life written by Giacomo Chevalier de Seingalt Casanova and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 1997-05-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning translation of the complete memoirs of Casanova available for the first time in paperback. In volumes 5 and 6, Casanova brings his flight from the Inquisitor's prison in Venice to a happy conclusion. Exiled from Venice, he goes to Munich and Paris, where he establishes himself as a cabalist, makes a fortune in Holland, helps start the French State Lottery, goes on to Switzerland where he meets Voltaire. Because every previous edition of Casanova's Memoirs had been abridged to suppress the author's political and religious views and tame his vivid, often racy, style, the literary world considered it a major event when Willard R. Trask's translation of the complete original text was published in six double volumes between 1966 and 1971. Trask's award-winning translation now appears in paperback for the first time.

Book A Literary Companion To Venice

Download or read book A Literary Companion To Venice written by Ian Littlewood and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1995-05-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arranged in the form of seven detailed walking tours through Venice, this literary companion provides an illuminating guide to the streets, palaces, churches, and canals that make up this exquisite city. Illustrations.

Book Adventurer

Download or read book Adventurer written by Leo Damrosch and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch “A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites . . . another top-notch work from Damrosch.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “An eye-opening and well-informed study of an ‘extraordinary character’ in all his darkness and brilliance.”—Publishers Weekly The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. Drawing on seldom used materials, including the original French and Italian primary sources, and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world’s most famous con men and seducers, Leo Damrosch offers a gripping, mature, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.

Book At Day s Close  Night in Times Past

Download or read book At Day s Close Night in Times Past written by A. Roger Ekirch and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beautifully illuminated by a color insert and with black-and-white illustrations throughout, this compelling narrative of night is panoramic in scope yet fashioned on an intimate scale and enriched by personal stories.

Book Casanova s Secret Wife

    Book Details:
  • Author : Barbara Lynn-Davis
  • Publisher : Kensington Books
  • Release : 2017-07-25
  • ISBN : 1496712323
  • Pages : 353 pages

Download or read book Casanova s Secret Wife written by Barbara Lynn-Davis and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Full of passion and rich historical detail . . . an enthralling read, impossible to put down.” —Phyllis T. Smith, bestselling author of I Am Livia and The Daughters of Palatine Hill “This is Venice beneath the mask: A dark and fascinating love story hiding in the shadows of the golden city.” —Marina Fiorato, bestselling author of The Glassblower of Murano Set in eighteenth-century Venice and based on an actual account by Giacomo Casanova—here is a lush tale of desire and risk, offering a little known portrait of the writer as a young man. Caterina Capreta was an innocent girl of fourteen when she caught the attention of the world’s most infamous chronicler of seduction: Giacomo Casanova. Intoxicated by a fierce love, she wed Casanova in secret. But his shocking betrayal inspired her to commit an act that would mark her forever . . . Now twenty years later on the island of Murano, the woman in possession of Caterina’s most devastating secret has appeared with a request she cannot refuse: to take in a noble-born girl whose scandalous love affair resembles her own. But the girl’s presence stirs up unwelcome memories of Caterina’s turbulent past. Tested like never before, she reveals the story of the man she will never forget . . . Bringing to life a fascinating chapter in the history of Venice, Casanova’s Secret Wife is a tour de force that charts one woman’s journey through love and loss to redemption. “Seductive and unforgettable” —Harmony Verna, author of Daughter of Australia “Breathtaking, beautiful . . . will mesmerize readers." —Rosanna Chiofalo, author of Stella Mia

Book Casanova in Bolzano

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sandor Marai
  • Publisher : Vintage
  • Release : 2004-11-09
  • ISBN : 1400043735
  • Pages : 190 pages

Download or read book Casanova in Bolzano written by Sandor Marai and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2004-11-09 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Another rediscovered masterpiece from the Hungarian novelist whose Embers became an international bestseller—a sensuous, suspenseful, aphoristic novel about the world’s most notorious seducer and the encounter that changes him forever. In 1756 Giacomo Casanova escapes from a Venetian prison and resurfaces in the Italian village of Bolzano. Here he receives an unwelcome visitor: the aging but still fearsome Duke of Parma, who years before had defeated Casanova in a duel over a ravishing girl named Francesca and spared his life on condition that he never see her again. Now the duke has taken Francesca as his wife—and intercepted a love letter from her to his old rival. Rather than kill Casanova on the spot, he makes him a startling offer, one that is logical, perverse, and irresistible. Turning an historical episode into a dazzling fictional exploration of the clasp of desire and death, Casanova in Bolzano is further proof that Sándor Márai is one of the most distinctive voices of the twentieth century.

Book Casanova

Download or read book Casanova written by Ian Kelly and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-10-16 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Casanova, noted author Ian Kelly traces the life of Giacomo Casanova, a man whose very name is synonymous with sensuality, seduction and sexual prowess. But Casanova was more than just a great lover. A businessman, diplomat, spy, and philosopher, he authored more than twenty books, including a translation of The Iliad. Confidant to many infamous characters—including Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Catherine the Great—Casanova was undoubtedly charismatic. But how exactly did he seduce himself into infamy? In this richly drawn portrait, Casanova emerges as very much a product of eighteenth-century Venice. He reveled in its commedia del arte and Kelly posits that his successes as both a libertine and a libertarian grew from his careful study of its artifice and illusion. Food, travel, sex: Casanova’s great passions are timeless ones and Kelly brings to life in full flavor the grandeur of his exploits. He also articulates the fascinating personal philosophy that inspired Casanova’s quest to bed all manner of women. A riveting look at the life of the most legendary lover of all time, this is destined to become the definitive biography of Giacomo Casanova.

Book The Venetians

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paul Strathern
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2021-11-15
  • ISBN : 1639361251
  • Pages : 368 pages

Download or read book The Venetians written by Paul Strathern and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Republic of Venice was the first great economic, cultural, and naval power of the modern Western world. After winning the struggle for ascendency in the late 13th century, the Republic enjoyed centuries of unprecedented glory and built a trading empire which at its apogee reached as far afield as China, Syria, and West Africa. This golden period only drew to an end with the Republic’s eventual surrender to Napoleon. The Venetians illuminates the character of the Republic during these illustrious years by shining a light on some of the most celebrated personalities of European history—Petrarch, Marco Polo, Galileo, Titian, Vivaldi, Casanova... Frequently, though, these emblems of the city found themselves at odds with the Venetian authorities, who prized stability above all else and were notoriously suspicious of any "cult of personality." Was this very tension perhaps the engine for the Republic’s unprecedented rise? Rich with biographies of some of the most exalted characters who have ever lived, The Venetians is a refreshing and authoritative new look at the history of the most evocative of city-states.