The Betrothed - a Human Comedy: An essay on 'I promessi sposi' by Alessandro Manzoni

Abstract

It was not until 1822, the date of the first publication of what was later to be called 'I promessi sposi', that Alessandro Manzoni (1785 - 1873) published a work in which he felt he could successfully express his view of the human predicament, its negative and positive aspects. Up to that time he had experimented with poetry and theatre. A mixture of history and fiction, 'I promessi sposi' focuses on events in the lives of two very ordinary people, showing how they were caught up in great events, and also not so great events, and how they reacted to them. In his other works he had sought to define what he felt to be the causes of suffering and how to cope with them in the activities of great personages - the Longobard Aldechi, the Count Carmagnola, and, in his poem 'Il Cinque maggio', Napoleon Bonaparte himself, just to name a few. He continually revised the novel and it reached its final form only in the year 1847 but even then he was not entirely happy with it, considering that ultimately it was impossible to blend history and fiction in the one literary work. ... The following essay attempts to define the world view of 'I promessi sposi'. It is the result of having taught the novel for many years to third-year students at the University of New England in Armidale. The appreciation of the novel on the part of many of these students who, unlike young Italians for whom it has suffered by being compulsory reading and, even worse, a compendium of correct grammar, found it a source of comfort and delight, has encouraged me to present in essay form a summary of the lectures I gave. The continual reference to the translation of the novel by Archibald Colquhoun, in my opinion still the best in English, rather than the original text, has been dictated by the same desire as I had then - to acquaint non Italian speaking readers with this beautiful novel and its comforting view of the human experience.