The Beautiful King

Palazzeschi, Aldo, 1885-1974Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 302K words
Chapters: 31

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.Il Re bello by Aldo PalazzeschiAuthor: Palazzeschi, Aldo, 1885-1974,Language: Italian, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 26, 2015

Editor's review

Aldo Palazzeschi was a major twentieth-century Italian writer whose works often show avant-garde and satirical humor. Il Re bello is written in Italian and is short, making it a suitable entry text for approaching Italian modern literature in the original. Published free by Project Gutenberg, the ebook is easily accessible and convenient to read on electronic devices anytime. While reading, note the narrator's playful treatment of "beauty" and "kingship," and the irony in the language's rhythm. Because it is a public-domain ebook, the edition information is relatively brief, and readers must rely on their own notes or dictionaries to grasp linguistic details. Suitable as supplementary material in literature courses, Italian language study, or comparative literature reading, and also for readers interested in twentieth-century Italian literature who want light reading of original texts.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Intermediate to advanced Italian learners who wish to read literary works in the original
Readers interested in twentieth-century Italian literature and the avant-garde
Students in comparative literature or modern European literature courses
Readers who enjoy short satirical narratives and are willing to read public-domain ebooks

Not a good fit for

Readers with no Italian who need sentence-by-sentence translation support
Readers expecting detailed annotations, introductions, or scholarly editions
Readers who prefer long plot-driven novels or popular stories

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the plot and tone, then go back to look up unfamiliar words and allusions.
Use an Italian dictionary or bilingual tools to organize key words chapter by chapter.
After each chapter, retell the narrator's satirical intent in your own words to check comprehension.
If used for a course, read alongside other twentieth-century Italian short works for comparison.

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 level of Italian is needed to read this book?

The text is in the original Italian; intermediate or higher reading ability is recommended, with the ability to use a dictionary to handle literary expressions and ironic tone. Beginners will find it difficult and are better off starting with a bilingual edition or an annotated anthology.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

This edition is a free public-domain ebook that is easy to obtain, but it usually provides only basic textual information and lacks detailed annotations, introductions, or scholarly appendices. Readers need to supplement background information and language tools themselves.

Is this book suitable as course material for literature classes?

It can serve as supplementary reading for modern Italian literature or comparative literature; it is short and convenient for classroom discussion. However, teachers need to prepare their own materials on the author's background, language notes, and textual analysis.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Palazzeschi, Aldo, 1885-1974 Author

Aldo Palazzeschi (1885–1974) was an Italian writer whose four works are held in this collection. Public information is limited, but the works at hand show that his writing spans fiction and poetry and is marked by a strong experimental bent. Il codice di Perelà unfolds an allegorical narrative around the fictional figure Perelà, with a strikingly original conception; L'Incendiario col rapporto sulla vittoria futurista di Trieste reveals his ties to the Futurist movement, with language and form inclined to rebel against tradition. Lanterna and Il Re bello likewise continue this vein of abundant imagination and gently ironic tone. Palazzeschi excelled at lodging observations of reality within absurd situations, and his work combines an avant-garde spirit with readability, making him a notable voice in twentieth-century Italian literature whose experimental writing has offered some inspiration to later authors.