Author:
Damrosch, Leopold, author.
ImprintNew Haven : Yale University Press, [2022]
Descriptionvii, 422 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm
Note:City of masks and mirrors -- Awakenings -- An erotic education -- A career in the church -- The mysterious castrato -- Casanova's children -- Corfu and Constantinople -- Metamorphosis -- Playboy -- Libertinism -- "You will also forget Henriette" -- Paris at last -- Nuns and lovers -- The great escape -- In search of the blind goddess -- Manon -- Rolling stone -- Jousting with Voltaire -- Still rolling -- Magus -- The end of Act I -- At the courts of Frederick and Catherine -- The duel -- "This phantom liberty" -- Spain -- Whiling away the years in Italy -- Trieste, and Venice at last -- The gathering gloom -- A pink Louis XV armchair.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:"This book aims to tell the quite sensational story of Casanova's life in greater depth, and with fuller use of his writings and modern commentaries, than has previously been done. It's not "new" in the sense of locating hitherto unknown material, and it doesn't advance any theoretical agenda. Instead it is a comprehensive reconsideration of the issues involved in the story of someone who was not only a serial seducer--with disturbing implications at the present time that previous biographers have largely ignored--but also a gambler, con man, and practitioner of magic. Casanova's brilliant memoir, entitled The Story of My Life, needs to be carefully questioned at many points where he can be suspected of exaggeration or outright invention. Damrosch also places him fully in the multiple subcultures he inhabited, including libertinism in thought as well as action, and also his experience as an "adventurer," that need to be clarified for modern readers. The author has drawn much more extensively on Casanova's non-autobiographical writings than previous biographers have done."-- Provided by publisher.
