Hail, King!

Castelo Branco, Camilo, 1825-1890Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.8

Word count: 6.9K words
Chapters: 1

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.Salve, Rei! by Camilo Castelo BrancoAuthor: Castelo Branco, Camilo, 1825-1890,Language: Portuguese, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Sep 16, 2007

Editor's review

Salve, Rei! is by the Portuguese novelist Camilo Castelo Branco, made available as a free electronic text by Project Gutenberg. Camilo is a leading figure of nineteenth-century Portuguese Romantic fiction, known for emotional entanglements, social manners, and human fate. This work is short and serves as an accessible introduction to his narrative style. The electronic edition is easy to search for character names and keywords, useful for course reading or quick access to the original in comparative research. Readers need some Portuguese to appreciate its regional color and narrative rhythm; background on nineteenth-century Portuguese society will make it easier. Overall, this is a public-domain text suited to both language study and literary introduction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Intermediate and advanced Portuguese learners who want to read nineteenth-century fiction in the original
Literature students studying Portuguese Romantic fiction and Camilo's work
Portuguese teachers needing short public-domain fiction for course materials
Readers interested in nineteenth-century Portuguese social manners and narrative literature

Not a good fit for

Readers with no Portuguese who do not plan to use a translation
Readers expecting modern fast-paced plots and plain style
Readers hoping to systematically read Camilo's major long novels

Reading tips

Learn a little about nineteenth-century Portuguese society and the features of Romantic fiction before starting.
Read once for characters and plot, then again closely for language and narrative technique.
Note forms of address and key scenes so you can search and revisit them in the electronic text.
Read alongside other short works by Camilo to observe his narrative habits and thematic preferences.

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

How good does my Portuguese need to be to read this book?

The original is nineteenth-century Portuguese, with period syntax and diction; upper-intermediate reading ability is recommended. Beginners can use a translation or bilingual materials to grasp the plot first, then return to the original for its language and narrative rhythm.

Is this work suitable for a literature course?

It is moderate in length and public-domain and easy to obtain, making it suitable as reading for a course on nineteenth-century Portuguese Romantic fiction. Teachers can excerpt passages for analysis or have students discuss character relationships and narrative perspective.

Any practical advice for reading the electronic edition?

Use reading software that supports search and annotation so you can quickly locate character names and key passages. Take brief notes on character relationships to avoid confusion caused by nineteenth-century narrative conventions and forms of address.

Comments

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About the author

Castelo Branco, Camilo, 1825-1890 Author

Camilo Castelo Branco (1825–1890) was a Portuguese novelist whose works number 47 in this collection, showing how prolific he was. His representative works include Amor de Perdição: Memorias d'uma familia, Amor de Salvação, A espada de Alexandre, Salve, Rei!, and A Morgadinha de Val-D'Amores.Entre a Flauta e a Viola. Judging from these titles, his writing centers on themes such as love, religious salvation, history and kingship, and social manners, spanning novels, miscellaneous reflections, and narrative prose. His tone is sentimental and dramatic, and he excels at portraying emotional conflict and the twists of fate. Because public information is limited, details of his life, nationality, and common classification cannot be confirmed, and no existing introduction is available; even so, the scale and thematic range of the works in this collection indicate his standing in Portuguese literature and merit readers' attention to the works themselves.