One of Europe’s foremost historians on the life of Casanova and the history of culture, society and political thought of eighteenth-century Europe, Professor Antonio Trampus celebrates the tercentenary of Casanova’s birth with a publication that explores how the Casanova myth has been shaped by succeeding generations:
“Adventurer, charlatan, swindler, gentleman, seducer… there are countless definitions for Giacomo Casanova. After the posthumous publication of his memoirs in 1822, the myth obscured his historical figure and transformed him into a character who reflected nineteenth- and twentieth-century society, an icon increasingly at the centre of modern commercial strategies. The book retraces the phases of this transfiguration through the words that have been used over time to designate the Venetian: from the libertine born of the manipulations and alterations of memories to the rebel favoured by anarchists and socialists in the nineteenth century, from the seducer mythologized by the futurists to the defendant in trials for outrage against decency, up to the showman, Don Giovanni and spy so beloved by twentieth-century cinema.” (translated from Italian)
Available here.
