Petronius
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Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Researchers in Portuguese literature interested in late nineteenth-century Portuguese authors and the rewriting of classical themes
- Portuguese majors who need original-text reading material outside the classroom
- Comparative literature readers interested in the reworking of classical figures in later literature
- Collectors of Portuguese public-domain texts in Project Gutenberg and digital humanities researchers
Not a good fit for
- General readers with no Portuguese and no access to a translation
- Casual readers expecting the fast pace of a modern novel
- Beginners who need a Chinese introduction or detailed notes to enter the text
Reading tips
- First confirm whether the copy at hand is the original or a translation; for the original, proceed paragraph by paragraph with a Portuguese dictionary.
- Before reading, look up Marcelino Mesquita's life and the period in which he wrote, and place the work in the context of late nineteenth-century Portuguese literature.
- Note passages related to classical material and consider whether the author rewrites faithfully or takes the theme in his own direction.
- If time is limited, read the opening and closing chapters first to grasp the overall structure, then decide whether to read the whole work.
About the publisher
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.
Contents
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FAQ
Is there a Chinese translation of this book?
What level of Portuguese is needed to read the original?
Is this book related to the ancient Roman Petronius?
Is it suitable as an introductory reading in Portuguese literature?
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About the author
Marcelino Mesquita (1856–1919) was a Portuguese playwright. Because public information is limited, the details of his life are difficult to set out at length, but in the history of Portuguese drama he is chiefly remembered for his comedies and satirical plays. His works are largely drawn from social reality, depicting the manners and characters of his time through comic plots and a satirical touch, and they show a realist tendency. His representative work Petronio is one of the principal pieces through which he is known and an important entry point for understanding his dramatic style. On the whole, Mesquita's writing reflects the tradition of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Portuguese drama in attending to society and using the stage to criticize contemporary abuses; his comedies and satirical plays had a certain influence on audiences of his day and offer useful texts for later study of Portuguese theatre in this period.
