Twilight in Italy

Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.2
Word count
317K words
Chapters
32

Tags

English Originals Foreign LiteratureTravel Italian TravelogueTravel WritingNatural ScenerySolitary MoodInner MonologueImpressionistic StylePoetic ProseRural LifeExotic CultureCross-Cultural View

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.Twilight in Italy by D. H. LawrenceAuthor: Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930,Language: English, Class: DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta, Release Date: Dec 1, 2005

Editor's review

Twilight in Italy is a collection of travel essays D. H. Lawrence wrote during his stays in northern Italy between 1912 and 1913, released by Project Gutenberg from a public-domain text. It is not a conventional guidebook: Lawrence barely mentions sights or routes, focusing instead on villages, churches, markets, farmers, dialects and daily rituals, capturing the atmosphere of a place and the inner state of its people in a highly personal, sensory language. His prose is both observant and lyrical, at times marked by strong intuitive judgments and emotional projection, so the reading is vivid yet carries the author's distinctive subjective edge. As a primary text for understanding Lawrence's essay style and his European wanderings, it has value in its own right; it is also a literary record of early twentieth-century Italian rural life. Best read slowly, one or two pieces at a time, paying attention to his descriptions of light, sound and bodily posture; a grasp of Italian geography and history will make it more rewarding.

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Reading tips

  1. Read slowly chapter by chapter, one or two pieces at a time, and note the most vivid sensory details afterward.
  2. Read alongside a map of northern Italy to connect places with chapters.
  3. Watch for the author's emotions and judgments, and distinguish observed fact from subjective projection.
  4. After finishing, revisit favorite passages and imitate their descriptive technique in short writing exercises.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32

FAQ

Is this book a travel guide? No. It is literary travel prose focused on the author's subjective impressions of and reflections on local scenery, people and atmosphere; it offers almost no practical information on transport, accommodation or sights and should not be used as a travel guide.
Can I read it without having read Lawrence's novels? Yes. This is a standalone collection of essays that does not depend on his novels' plots. Still, knowing Lawrence's themes of the body, instinct and the conflict with modern civilization will make it easier to understand the tendencies and emotions in his observations of rural Italy.
What reading pace suits it? A mix of slow reading and dipping in: the book consists of relatively independent pieces, so it need not be read straight through. Reading one or two pieces at a time, with time to reflect and take notes, reveals its density and sensory detail better than reading it all at once.

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About the author

Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930 Author

D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Lawrence, 1885–1930) was an English novelist, poet and essayist. The library holds 25 of his works, including the novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and The Lost Girl, the short-story collections The Prussian Officer and England, My England, and the travel book Twilight in Italy. His writing often draws on mining and rural life and focuses on relations between men and women, class, and the pressure modern civilization places on individual vitality, with a candid style that is sensuous and psychologically searching, at once poetic and forceful. Because his work boldly touched on desire and social taboo, he was controversial in his lifetime and is now regarded as a major voice in twentieth-century English literature. Detailed information beyond his works is limited, so this note relies on the available works and established common knowledge.