The Archdeacon's Granddaughter

Castelo Branco, Camilo, 1825-1890Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.7

Word count: 332K words
Chapters: 34

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Neta do Arcediago by Camilo Castelo BrancoAuthor: Castelo Branco, Camilo, 1825-1890,Language: Portuguese, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Aug 20, 2009

Editor's review

Camilo Castelo Branco was one of Portugal's foremost nineteenth-century novelists, and A Neta do Arcediago (The Archdeacon's Granddaughter), an early representative work, has the typical coloring of Romantic melodrama: family secrets, religious identity, and personal feeling intertwine, and characters waver between moral discipline and desire. This public-domain ebook edition is released by Project Gutenberg in Portuguese and falls under the PQ class of Portuguese-language literature. Its value lies in giving readers direct access to the narrative cadence and rhetorical style of the nineteenth-century Portuguese novel, and in showing how the author embeds observations of social custom and church life within a popular plot. It suits use as supplementary material in Portuguese-literature courses, or independent reading by those who know Portuguese and are interested in Iberian literature. Note that this is an electronic transcription: readers should treat it as a reading and research text, not a critically edited edition.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Portuguese majors who need original nineteenth-century Portuguese fiction
Readers studying Romantic literature, especially melodrama and family narrative
Self-learners who know Portuguese and want to broaden their Iberian reading
Readers interested in conflicts between church settings and secular society

Not a good fit for

Readers without Portuguese, since there is no facing Chinese translation
General-fiction readers expecting modern pacing and spare narration
Scholars needing an authoritative critical edition or detailed annotation

Reading tips

Read a chapter first to adjust to nineteenth-century Portuguese syntax and rhetoric
Jot down characters and family lines so the plot does not become confusing
Read alongside background on nineteenth-century Portuguese society and the church
After finishing, revisit key turning points to appreciate the plotting technique

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What language level does this book require?

The original is in nineteenth-century Portuguese, with long sentences and elaborate rhetoric. It suits readers at intermediate level or above who can use a dictionary for unfamiliar words and archaic expressions; beginners will find it hard going.

Is this a print book or an electronic edition?

This is a public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg in Portuguese, classed under PQ Portuguese literature. It is free and searchable, but it is not a modern critical edition with annotations, so cite with care regarding textual variants.

What is the novel mainly about?

Judging from the title and the author's style, the story centers on the archdeacon's granddaughter and her family relationships, with Romantic melodrama, religious identity, family secrets, and personal feeling in conflict. For the plot itself, consult the original; it is not retold here.

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About the author

Castelo Branco, Camilo, 1825-1890 Author

Camilo Castelo Branco (1825–1890) was a Portuguese novelist whose works number 47 in this collection, showing how prolific he was. His representative works include Amor de Perdição: Memorias d'uma familia, Amor de Salvação, A espada de Alexandre, Salve, Rei!, and A Morgadinha de Val-D'Amores.Entre a Flauta e a Viola. Judging from these titles, his writing centers on themes such as love, religious salvation, history and kingship, and social manners, spanning novels, miscellaneous reflections, and narrative prose. His tone is sentimental and dramatic, and he excels at portraying emotional conflict and the twists of fate. Because public information is limited, details of his life, nationality, and common classification cannot be confirmed, and no existing introduction is available; even so, the scale and thematic range of the works in this collection indicate his standing in Portuguese literature and merit readers' attention to the works themselves.