The Golden Calf: A Three-Act Comedy

Jotuni, Maria, 1880-1943Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3

Word count: 125K words
Chapters: 13

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. Kultainen vasikka: Kolminäytöksinen huvinäytelmä by Maria Jotuni. Author: Jotuni, Maria, 1880-1943. Language: Finnish. Class: PH: Language and Literatures: Finno-Ugrian and Basque languages and literatures. Release Date: Oct 13, 2014.

Editor's review

Kultainen vasikka: Kolminäytöksinen huvinäytelmä (The Golden Calf: A Three-Act Comedy) is a three-act comic play by the Finnish author Maria Jotuni. Jotuni was known for portraying family relations, marriage, and class ambition; her plays often drive conflict through everyday dialogue, presenting characters' pursuit of money and respectability beneath a seemingly light comic frame. This is the original Finnish public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, and serves as an entry point to modern Finnish drama and to Jotuni's dramatic style. With a clear three-act structure and concentrated scenes, it can be read as a stage script, with attention to subtext in the dialogue and to comic timing. As a free electronic text it lacks production notes and background introduction; readers are advised to learn something about modern Finnish society and theatrical tradition before entering the play, which makes the satire easier to gauge.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Intermediate to advanced Finnish learners who want to practice dialogue and spoken expression through a play
Readers interested in Nordic drama and Finnish literature
Theater enthusiasts who enjoy three-act structure and drawing-room conflict
Readers new to Jotuni's plays or modern Finnish comedy

Not a good fit for

Readers with no Finnish who need a translation to follow
Readers who prefer long narrative fiction and are unused to script format
Drama researchers who need production notes or a scholarly annotated edition

Reading tips

Read the cast list and act structure first, then go act by act, noting how the conflict develops and turns in each.
Treat the script as a text for reading aloud, voicing the dialogue by role to better grasp comic timing and subtext.
After finishing, sum up the core conflict of each act in a few sentences to test your understanding of character motives and of what is being satirized.
Supplement with background on modern Finnish society and family norms to help understand the play's themes of money and respectability.

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

Is this a play or a novel? How does reading it differ?

It is a three-act comic play, made up mainly of character dialogue and a few stage directions. Read it with attention to verbal exchanges, scene changes, and inter-act rhythm rather than descriptive narration; sorting out the conflict act by act makes it clearer.

How difficult is the Finnish?

The text is mostly everyday dialogue but includes colloquial expressions and period vocabulary; a Finnish reading level of B1 or above is advisable. Beginners may first follow the plot in translation, then return to the original to feel the tone of the dialogue.

What does the title "The Golden Calf" refer to in the play?

The golden calf comes from religious tradition and often symbolizes the worship of money and material things. The play revolves around conflicts over money, respectability, and family relations; watch how the characters are driven by material desire to understand the title's satirical meaning.

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

Jotuni, Maria, 1880-1943 Author

Maria Jotuni (1880–1943) was a Finnish author whose eleven works are included in the collection, among them the short-story collections When Emotions Stir, Love, Relationships and Everyday Life, the novella Martin's Crime, and the plays The Man's Rib, The Golden Calf and The Old Home. Writing in a realistic vein, she depicted everyday life among Finnish rural and urban classes, using dialogue and detail to reveal her characters' conflicts and struggles in matters of emotion, marriage and family. Her comedies also offer gentle satire of human weakness. Her plain, natural language and vivid characters give her a place in the history of modern Finnish literature and drama, and her works are still read and performed today. Because public information is limited, details of her life, education and awards are not discussed here.