Mater dolorosa

Rovetta, Gerolamo, 1854-1910Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 787K words
Chapters: 79

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.Mater dolorosa by Gerolamo RovettaAuthor: Rovetta, Gerolamo, 1854-1910,Language: Italian, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: May 21, 2009

Editor's review

Mater dolorosa is a novel by the Italian writer Gerolamo Rovetta, offered by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain electronic text in Italian. Rovetta was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and his works often take Lombard social life as their setting and focus on emotional and moral dilemmas. The title means "sorrowful mother," and the title alone conveys the strong tragic and maternal themes. As a public-domain ebook, its value lies first in accessibility: readers can read this work of Italian literature in the original without hunting for a rare print copy. For learners of Italian, it offers authentic material in nineteenth-century narrative prose; for readers studying literature and social attitudes after Italian unification, it is also a usable primary text. Note that Project Gutenberg editions usually lack modern editorial introductions and detailed notes, so readers must supply background knowledge themselves, and the Italian original demands a certain level of language ability.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners with intermediate to advanced Italian reading ability who want to encounter nineteenth-century Italian fiction
Literary readers studying literature, society, and family attitudes after Italian unification
People looking for public-domain Italian texts for translation practice or corpus analysis
General readers interested in classic novels about motherhood and family tragedy

Not a good fit for

Readers with weak Italian who want a Chinese translation or a bilingual annotated edition
Researchers needing modern scholarly introductions, detailed historical notes, and textual collation
Readers who prefer light plots and have limited patience for nineteenth-century sentimental narrative

Reading tips

First learn about the social background of Lombardy after Italian unification, then enter the novel's plot.
Italian learners can excerpt three to five long sentences per chapter for grammar and vocabulary analysis.
Read it alongside other works by Rovetta to observe continuities in his themes and narrative technique.
After finishing, look up discussions of nineteenth-century Italian "sentimental fiction" to help place the book.

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 there a Chinese translation of this book?

As far as current information shows, Project Gutenberg offers the Italian original and mentions no Chinese translation. Chinese readers who do not know the language will need to find another translation or use translation tools to assist their reading.

What language level is needed to read this book?

The original is nineteenth-century Italian narrative prose with long sentences; intermediate to advanced Italian reading ability is recommended. Beginners can start with a plot summary or a parallel translation before attempting the original.

Does the Project Gutenberg edition have notes and an introduction?

Project Gutenberg usually provides the public-domain text itself, generally without modern editorial introductions, historical notes, or textual collation. Readers need to supply biographical and historical background on their own.

Comments

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About the author

Rovetta, Gerolamo, 1854-1910 Author

Gerolamo Rovetta (1854–1910) was an Italian author, with fourteen of his works held in this collection. Because public information is limited, the details of his life are difficult to describe at length, yet the surviving titles give a fair picture of his writing: he produced both novels and plays, and his representative works include Mater dolorosa, Casta diva, La baraonda, La moglie di Sua Eccellenza, L'idolo, La Signorina: Romanzo, Sott'acqua: racconto, and the three-act comedy La trilogia di Dorina. These works mostly take social reality and family ethics as their themes, unfolding their plots with care and giving their characters a marked dramatic tension, which shows that he was skilled in both narrative and stage writing. In this collection his works are classified under inspirational growth, suggesting that in the Chinese context they are regarded as reading with an edifying quality.