Adventurer
The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova
New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2022], ©2022.
Format: Book
Description: vii, 422 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
The iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was a storied adventurer through the Enlightenment's shadowy underside. Known as a serial seducer, he was also an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, and a spy. The first to tell his own story, in his massive autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.0 Drawing on seldom used materials, Leo Damrosch situates Casanova fully in the multiple subcultures he inhabited. Reading Casanova's memoir with a critical eye and engaging extensively with his non-autobiographical writings, he brings alive this extraordinary figure and the eighteenth-century world that Casanova knew so intimately. Casanova aspired to a life of freedom from restraints, but, Damrosch asks, freedom at whose expense?
Subjects:
Casanova, Giacomo, 1725-1798
Adventure and adventurers -- Europe -- Biography.
Europe -- History -- 18th century -- Biography.
Casanova, Giacomo, 1725-1798
Adventure and adventurers -- Europe -- Biography.
Europe -- History -- 18th century -- Biography.
ISBN:
0300248288 ‡q (hardcover)
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
BIOGRAPHY Casanova, Giacomo | Cooper (Forest Acres) | Biography | In |
Includes bibliographical references and index.