Valperga (novel)

"Valperga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca" is an 1823 historical novel by the Romantic novelist Mary Shelley.

Publication details

Mary Shelley's original title is now the subtitle; "Valperga" was selected by her father, William Godwin, who edited the work for publication between 1821 and February 1823. His edits emphasized the female protagonist and shortened the novel. [Rossington, Introduction to "Valperga", xv; Curran, 103.]

Plot summary

"Valperga" is a historical novel which relates the adventures of the early fourteenth-century despot Castruccio Castracani, a real historical figure who became the lord of Lucca and conquered Florence. In the novel, his armies threaten the fictional fortress of Valperga, governed by Countess Euthanasia, the woman he loves. He forces her to choose between her feelings for him and political liberty. She chooses the latter and sails off to her death.

Themes

Through the perspective of medieval history, Mary Shelley addresses a live issue in post-Napoleonic Europe, the right of autonomously governed communities to political liberty in the face of imperialistic encroachment. [Curran, 108-11.] She opposes Castruccio's compulsive greed for conquest with a female alternative, Euthanasia's government of Valperga on the principles of reason and sensibility. [Rossington, Introduction to "Valperga", xii.] In the view of "Valperga"'s recent editor Stuart Curran, the work represents a feminist version of Walter Scott's new and often masculine genre, historical novel. [Curran, 106-07.] Modern critics draw attention to Mary Shelley's republicanism, and her interest in questions of political power and moral principles. [Bennett, "An Introduction", 60.]

Reception

"Valperga" earned largely positive reviews, but it was judged as a love story, its ideological and political framework overlooked. [Bennett, "An Introduction", 60–61.] It was not, however, republished in Mary Shelley's lifetime, and she later remarked that it never had "fair play". [Rossington, Introduction to "Valperga", xxiv.] Recently, "Valperga" has been praised for its sophisticated narrative form and its authenticity of detail. [Curran, 104-06. Mary Shelley, as Percy Shelley confirmed, "visited the scenery which she described in person", and consulted many books about Castruccio and his times.]

Notes

Bibliography

*Bennett, Betty T. "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction". Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 080185976X.
*Bennett, Betty T. "Machiavelli's and Mary Shelley's Castruccio: Biography as Metaphor". "Romanticism" 3.2 (1997): 139-51.
*Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical novels: "Valperga" and "Perkin Warbeck". "The Evidence of the Imagination". Eds. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978.
*Blumberg, Jane. "Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. ISBN 0877453977.
*Brewer, William D. "Mary Shelley's "Valperga": The Triumph of Euthanasia's Mind". "European Romantic Review" 5.2 (1995): 133-48.
*Carson, James P. "'A Sigh of Many Hearts': History, Humanity, and Popular Culture in "Valperga". "Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein": Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth". Eds. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
*Clemit, Pamela. "The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley". Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. ISBN 0198112203.
*Curran, Stuart. "Valperga". "The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley". Ed. Esther Schor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521007704.
*Lew, Joseph W. "God's Sister: History and Ideology in "Valperga". "The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond" Frankenstein. Eds. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: New York University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195077407.
*O'Sullivan, Barbara Jane. "Beatrice in "Valperga": A New Cassandra". "The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond" Frankenstein. Eds. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: New York University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195077407.
*Lokke, Kari. "'Children of Liberty': Idealist Historiography in Staël, Shelley, and Sand". "PMLA" 118.3 (2003): 502-20.
*Lokke, Kari. "Sibylline Leaves: Mary Shelley's "Valperga" and the Legacy of "Corinne". "Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature". Ed. Gregory Maertz, Gregory. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.
*Poovey, Mary. "The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen". Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. ISBN 0226675289.
*Rajan, Rilottama. "Between Romance and History: Possibility and Contingency in Godwin, Leibniz, and Mary Shelley's "Valperga". "Mary Shelley in Her Times". Eds. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
*Rossington, Michael. "Future Uncertain: The Republican Tradition and its Destiny in "Valperga". "Mary Shelley in Her Times". Eds. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
*Schiefelbein, Michael. "'The Lessons of True Religion': Mary Shelley's Tribute to Catholicism in "Valperga". "Religion and Literature" 30.2 (1998): 59-79.
*Shelley, Mary. "Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca". Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. ISBN 0192832891.
*Shelley, Mary. "Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca". "The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley". Vol. 3. Ed. Nora Crook. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996.
*Sunstein, Emily W. "Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality". 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. ISBN 0801842182.
*Wake, Ann M. Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's "Valperga" and "Perkin Warbeck". "Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein": Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth". Eds. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
*White, Daniel E. "'The God Undeified': Mary Shelley's "Valperga", Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire". "Romanticism on the Net" 6 (Mary 1997).
*Williams, John. "Translating Mary Shelly's "Valperga" into English: Historical Romance, Biography or Gothic Fiction?". "European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange, 1760-1960". Ed. Avril Horner. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.