Novellas

De Amicis, Edmondo, 1846-1908Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 428K words
Chapters: 43

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.Novelle by Edmondo De AmicisAuthor: De Amicis, Edmondo, 1846-1908,Language: Italian, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Nov 24, 2018

Editor's review

This is the short-story collection Novelle by the Italian writer Edmondo De Amicis (author of Cuore), released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain Italian text. De Amicis is known for warm, realistic narrative aimed at ordinary readers; his short stories often draw on daily life, boyhood growth, and the feelings of common people, are brief with clear plots, and carry the stamp of nineteenth-century Italian realism and its educational intent. The book's value is as a lighter entry point than Cuore: readers can sense through the stories how the author handles family, school, wealth and poverty, and sympathy, and it can also serve as a bridge to reading Italian in the original. It does not aim for modernist narrative experiment but excels in plain sentimental education and readability. Suitable for graded extensive reading by Italian learners and for casual browsing by readers interested in post-unification Italian society and children's literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners with basic Italian who want to practice reading short stories in the original
Readers who like Cuore and want to discover De Amicis's short fiction
Readers interested in nineteenth-century Italian realist short stories and educational narrative
Teachers needing short public-domain texts for translation practice or classroom material

Not a good fit for

Readers with no Italian who want to read a Chinese translation directly
Readers who prefer modernist experimental narrative or strong plot twists
Contemporary readers sensitive to the nineteenth-century moralizing tone

Reading tips

Order the pieces by length and read the three shortest first to become familiar with the author's voice.
After each story, write a two- or three-sentence summary in Italian, then check for deviations against your understanding in Chinese.
Note recurring themes of family, school, and wealth and poverty on sticky notes, and review their distribution after finishing.
For translation practice, take one story, translate it literally, then rewrite it in natural Chinese and compare the two approaches.

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 is the relationship between this book and Cuore?

Both are by De Amicis, but Novelle is a short-story collection, not a sequel to or excerpt from Cuore. It contains several independent short stories with similar themes and style, and can be seen as narrative work by the same author for ordinary readers; the specific contents follow this book.

How difficult is the original Italian?

De Amicis's short stories are generally plain in language with short sentences, suitable for learners with basic grammar and common vocabulary. Nineteenth-century diction and punctuation may cause minor obstacles; start with the shorter stories and use a dictionary without obsessing over every word.

Can I read it without any Italian?

Reading the original directly would be clearly difficult, since this is a public-domain Italian text without a Chinese parallel. Complete beginners should first find a Chinese translation to understand the content, or treat this book as advanced material for later language study rather than an入门 reader.

Is it suitable for using the whole book in class?

Selected pieces are more suitable. The stories are independent and of manageable length, so teachers can choose by theme or length for reading, translation, or discussion; reading the whole book requires considering students' language level and class hours, and no blanket answer applies.

Comments

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About the author

De Amicis, Edmondo, 1846-1908 Author

Edmondo De Amicis (1846-1908) was an Italian writer best known to Chinese readers for his children's book Cuore (often translated as The Heart), subtitled "An Italian Schoolboy's Journal." The library holds 19 of his works, including, besides Cuore, the travel books Morocco, Its People and Places, Spain, v. 1, Constantinople, v. 1, Constantinople, v. 2 and Holland, v. 1, as well as the military sketches La vita militare: bozzetti and the Finnish translation Sydän: Kirja nuorisolle. These works draw on school, family, army life and foreign travel, written in a warm, realistic style that stresses feeling and moral education; Cuore is the most widely read and has had a lasting influence among inspirational coming-of-age books. Public information on his life dates and nationality is limited, so such details are omitted here.