The Marble Faun (Oxford World's Classics)
The fragility-and the durability-of human life and art dominate this story of American expatriates in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. Befriended by Donatello, a young Italian with the classical grace of the "Marble Faun," Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon find their pursuit of art taking a sinister...
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The fragility-and the durability-of human life and art dominate this story of American expatriates in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. Befriended by Donatello, a young Italian with the classical grace of the "Marble Faun," Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon find their pursuit of art taking a sinister turn as Miriam's unhappy past precipitates the present into tragedy. Hawthorne's 'International Novel' dramatizes the confrontation of the Old World and the New and the uncertain relationship between the 'authentic' and the 'fake' in life as in art. The author's evocative descriptions of classic sites made The Marble Faun a favorite guidebook to Rome for Victorian tourists, but this richly ambiguous symbolic romance is also the story of a murder, and a parable of the Fall of Man. As the characters find their civilized existence disrupted by the awful consequences of impulse, Hawthorne leads his readers to question the value of Art and Culture and addresses the great evolutionary debate which was beginning to shake Victorian society.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780192839763 (0192839764)
Publish date: March 7th 2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Pages no: 432
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Novels,
Literature,
Cultural,
Italy,
American,
Classic Literature,
Literary Fiction,
Mystery,
Art,
19th Century
Thank you Little Edie, I never would have picked this if it hadn't been for you.'The Marble Faun' follows three expatriate artists and their Italian friend Donatello living in Rome in the mid 19th century. Hilda is sweet-natured and devout, literally living above the city in a tower room and, though...
I loved Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables; I thought both had brilliant characters and writing. In the case of Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter, I loved her strength and abiding compassion. And in The House of Seven Gables I loved the old maid Hepzibah and her cousin Ph...
I really like Hawthorne’s writing. He wrote two of my favorite works. But for me, The Marble Faun is missing something.The good: Hawthorne makes some really good insights here...exposing the irony of art and situation...what might really go on behind the scenes when creating a piece of art or sculpt...
[These notes were made in 1983:]. I found this a very pleasant read, and with more substance than I anticipated from a preliminary brush through the first chapters. It was written in Italy, and abounds in that luxurious description of old artworks and older buildings which seems to overtake so many...
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 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Susan Manning, now listed on BookLikes)