Wisdom and Woe

Rienzi (aka Cola di Rienzo, 1313-1354) was a 14th-century Italian politician and leader who styled himself the "tribune of the Roman people." In his lifetime, he advocated for the unification of Italy and the abolition of temporal papal power, serving as a model and inspiration for the Risorgimento in the 19th century. He is the subject of an ode by Petrarch, an opera by Wagner, and the novel Rienzi (1835) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Today, Lytton is ingloriously remembered for the opening line "It was a dark and stormy night." But he was a literary luminary in his time, credited by Edgar Allan Poe with enkindling "the wildest passions of our nature, the most profound of our thoughts, the brightest visions of our fancy, and the most ennobling and lofty of our aspirations."

Poe's review of Rienzi considered it Lytton's best novel, calling it "a profound and lucid exposition of the morale of Government — of the Philosophies of Rule and Misrule — of the absolute incompatibility of Freedom and Ignorance — Tyranny in the few and Virtue in the many." Its democratic message is "something akin to direct evidence that ... in a nation's self is the only security for a nation — and that it is absolutely necessary to model" government "upon the character of the governed."

Week 1 (July 20): Books I - II
Week 2 (August 3): Books III - X

Rienzi:

"The Bell-Tower" is a short story by Herman Melville, collected in The Piazza Tales and published in 1856.

In Renaissance Italy, an eccentric architect, Bannadonna, builds a colossal tower summited by a bell and an uncanny mechanical man to ring it. The story reveals the disturbing relationship among a creator, his creation, an obsessive artistic vision, and the Faustian bargain paid by his community for its construction.

One possible inspiration for the story is Giotto (c. 1267-1337), the great Florentine painter, sculptor, and architect who, in 1334, was commissioned to construct a similarly ambitious bell tower. The massive project was beset with difficulties: "Giotto did not live long enough to see it finished" (Vasari), and it suffered further delays by political turmoil and the Black Plague. His successors officially completed it in 1359, but it never fulfilled its original design.

Lorenzo de' Medici, "the Magnificent," memorialized the tower in 1490. A nearby plaque reads: "Do you admire a beautiful tower resounding with sacred sound? By my design this tower also reached for the stars. But I am Giotto, why cite such deeds? My name alone is worth a lengthy ode."

"The Bell-Tower":

In "Joan of Naples," Alexandre Dumas depicts the turbulent reign of Queen Joanna I of Naples (1325-1382), a strong and divisive figure in medieval Italy, whose personal influence was crucially linked with the political instability (and ultimate demise) of the Kingdom of Naples.

The story traces Joan's development from a young, innocent princess; to her first marriage and first regrets; into a fierce monarch contending with an intricate web of powerful lovers and political intrigues; culminating in her betrayal and assassination.

Dumas paints medieval Naples in all its illusions and reality, its courtly grandeur and cynical peril. He examines topics like authority, love, loyalty, and self-sacrifice while engrossing readers in a fusion of fact and fiction. The story was first published as part of Dumas' eight-volume series Celebrated Crimes (1839–40).

Joan of Naples:

Romola (1862) is one of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative works: sworn by Eliot herself to be "written with [her] best blood"; admired by Robert Browning as "the noblest and most heroic prose poem" he had ever read; and vivid with historical, political, and geographical details that are "wonderful in their energy and in their accuracy" (Anthony Trollope).

It offers an in-depth perspective of the artistic, philosophical, religious, and social life of Renaissance Florence, featuring a cast of real-world figures such as Piero di Cosimo, Fra Angelico, and Niccolò Machiavelli. The novel begins in 1492, just as Italy is entering one of its most turbulent historical periods: including war, the exile of the Medici dynasty (famous for its luxuriance), and the ascendency of the religious zealot, Savonarola (famous for his austerity), harbingering Italy's proto-Protestant Reformation.

In this crucible is introduced the heroine, Romola, a naive youth seeking to define herself. A mysterious shipwreck survivor, Tito Melema, arrives in Florence seeking to redefine himself. The two are soon married, but Tito is haunted by a dark past. Swirled in national and marital intrigues of Shakespearean dimensions, Romola confronts crises of faith and virtue, loyalty and resistance.

Schedule:

• Week 1 (August 17): Introduction-Chapter 14
• Week 2 (August 24): Chapters 15-33
• Week 3 (August 31): Chapters 34-51
• Week 4 (September 7): Chapters 52-Epilogue

Romola: