Romola (Penguin English Library)

This was an old story and an excellent book to read about Florence in the early 14th century and how marriages and money was exchanged. A lot of corruption and how the innocent was treated in wealthy families. How. Death came swiftly to anyone and there was no law to punish.

I was ordering a hardback book so it didn't occur to me to check the dimensions - the book is tiny and hence the print is very tiny. Will probably pass it along and look for a copy that will be easier on the eyes

When one starts reading a Victorian novelist, one prepares before hand to face a certain amount of wooden, heavy-handed moralizing, as every great narrative of the epoch is fraught with the opposition between the calls of pleasure and the calls of duty, between seeking for one's private advantage and sticking to one's role, with the writer making the latter to win overwhelming. This novel is no different, in that it's the dutiful Romola that has the upper hand over her nice and debauched husband Tito Melena in the end. However, the novel being set in late Renaissance Italy- a country with which George Eliot had an enduring love affair - it captures the atmosphere of the time and place in such a beautiful way that this enormous, throughly reserched historical novel has such a flowing, luxurious style that takes an almost liquid quality, like a fresh, transparent scream flowing along a summer Mediterranean landscape. Also, in the person of Savonarola, Eliot menaged to introduce the figure of the idealist turned evil through his attachment to his call. In short: a gorgeous novel. Loved it!

Given the majority of Eliot readers begin with Middlemarch, I found myself in the unique position of not only beginning with Romola, but also on a subject that I find most interesting. That of Renaissance Italy. Beginning at the death of the great Lorenzo di Medici in '92 I read this great novel twice. Once quickly as any other Twenty-First century paperback; the second, slowly, with more respect for the intellectual scope within the pages.After the first attempt I was mildly disappointed. I came away with no true sense of the whole that is fifteenth century Florence and a bewilderment at the inconsistent central characterisation of Tito Melema and his golden-haired wife, Romola. The supporting actors were brilliant, from Fra Girolama's fantatical Catholicism to Bratti's salesmanship. But I was left disappointed, believing in the superficality of Tito, the maddening naivety of Tessa, and the almost puritanical martyrdom of Romola.So I re-read it. Slowly.It is now extremely clear why this great work of english literature is, as Eliot herself puts it, a "book of mine which I more thoroughly feel that I swear by every sentence as having been written with my best blood".Each scene is mesmerically depicted, the infintesimal attention to details and Eliot's total control of her subject matter shines through. Renaissance Florence wasn't so well depicted by its contemporaries. From Tito's waking at the Loggia de' Cerchi to his final fall at the Ponte Vecchio his character moves through a full range as you would expect from a man in his early twenties. His child-like mesmerism coupled with his Greek tutorage gives rise to a cherubic man whom Florence loves. His fatal flaw is his desire for love and a single terrible lie he gives that, like Murphy's Law, evolves into a a stigma that alters his very persona. What is all the more damaging is that you truly believe he is unaware of the pain he causes. He is truly egocentric, in an almost blameless way. For Romola, you cold argue the opposite. Indeed she is potentially more culpable. Her fierce intellectualism is offset by a descent into a world of religious supersition, a world where religion is used as a political tool. Throughout she has the knowledge of where her actions will take her and a terrible sense of duty and restrains her. From the beginning, with the story we hear so often of Tito's escape from drowning, to his final near drowning at the hands of the mob, to his strangulation by his father there is a certain bitter justice until all that he leaves is his proud and world-scarred wife Romola and the innocence that he preserved with Tessa. Tito's move from innocent 'hero' to startled villain is an excerise in human failings. Yet it is not a sufficient single human tragedy, as Eliot says, "Florence was busy with greater affairs, and the preparation of a deeper tragedy". In many respects `Romola' is Eliot's King Lear. The parallels are many, including Baldessare's depiction. There is no Edgar, nor Edm

Yes, it bristles with Glossaries and Appendices and Notes like so much barbed wire. (And if you actually read the Penguin editor's introduction, it's a sure thing you'll never read the novel: she makes it sound like about as much fun as chewing rocks.) But don't let all that deter you. You may have some rough going at the beginning, mostly because Latin and Greek scholarship is so important to the plot. Use the notes and they'll enhance your enjoyment of the story, but ignore them and you're still in for a thrilling tale gorgeously told. Tito Melema is one of the great characters in fiction, and he's someone we all know: a thoroughly despicable human being who has no idea he's anything but a nice guy. Eliot has wrought a dreamy and hair-raising hybrid of fiction and history, infused with her own astonishing insight and complicated sympathy and delivered in her matchless prose. I loved this book.

George Eliot spent two years preparing "Romola", and the result is a rich, densely detailed "Tale of the Renaissance". Never a facile writer, here she is concerned with one of the most intellectually challenging (not to mention politically complicated) periods in history; and she paints the panoply and power struggles as a background for the personal tragedy which is the novel's crux. While not an "easy read" in the Sir Walter Scott sense, "Romola" presents in sumptous detail the banquets, the festivities, and the famous bonfire of vanities that one associates with late 15th Century Florence.But from a purely literary viewpoint, the most important thing about the book is its delineation of Tito Melema, the young man who in the opening chapters is the story's hero, but slowly, irrevocably becomes its villain. Neither Sir Walter nor Charles Dickens has psychological insight (in the modern sense) as sharp as George Eliot's, and this study of a fictional character's downfall is one of the most stunning depictions of corruption in English literature. That he is the husband of the heroine, a sensitive, finely sensual woman, makes the tragedy all the more poignant. Scenes involving historical characters (including Savonarola and Machiavelli) tend to be a little stiff in costume movie style. Oh, and because the story takes place in the 1490's, one must imagine the Piazza della Signoria without Michelangelo and Cellini. This must really have frustrated a connoisseur like George Eliot.

I loved this book! Set in fifteenth century Florence, Romola explores the deep recesses of the soul. Renaissance Italy with its political/religious conflicts, intellectual, pursuits, artistry and pageantry are all beautifully protrayed throughout Eliot's magnificent love story. Deceit, greed and selfishness are artfully displayed against the purity of a nobel soul which knows no compromise. Romola, the book's main character is a study in virtue, while Tito her husband has but the veneer of goodness. Tito falls forever because of one lie. This is a book to read slowly and savor.