Dissatisfied with the novel’s language, which Manzoni thought was too reliant on Milanese dialect and French influences, he spent most of the next decade rewriting it in the Tuscan vernacular, and the definitive version appeared in 1840.

Already famous in Europe as a poet (for “March 1821” and “The Fifth of May”), he began to write his only novel, The Betrothed, in 1821.

Manzoni wrote poetry, fiction, plays, and treatises on language, literature, and religion. Of their ten children, eight died during Manzoni’s lifetime. Soon after the marriage, he and his wife converted to Catholicism. Manzoni himself was raised with atheistic beliefs. In 1808 Manzoni married Enrichetta Blondel-the daughter of a Swiss banker and a devout, puritanical Protestant. The time he spent at his paternal family’s property near Lake Como also left a strong impression, as reflected in his description of the region in The Betrothed. His time in Paris, as well as the French occupation of Milan (under Napoleon Bonaparte), greatly influenced young Manzoni, providing him the opportunity to meet and study many great European cultural figures of the day. Alessandro experienced a rather unstable childhood of wet nurses, boarding schools, and traveling back and forth between Paris and Milan, but he adored his new father figure, Imbonati. In any case, Giulia eventually eloped with the well-known Milanese banker Carlo Imbonati. There is much speculation that Beccaria’s actual father was Giovanni Verri, a prominent liberal intellectual.

Officially Manzoni’s father was Pietro Manzoni, Giulia’s husband and a conservative who was 17 years her senior. A novel set in Lombardy, northern Italy, in 1628-30 definitive version published in Italian (as I promessi sposi) in 1840, in English in 1844.Īn evil nobleman interferes with a couple’s wedding plans to escape his reach, the two part and go on adventures that intersect with some of the most harrowing events to occur in early-seventeenth-century Lombardy.Įvents in History at the Time the Novel Takes PlaceĮvents in History at the Time the Novel Was WrittenĪlessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) was born in Milan to Giulia Beccaria, the free-spirited daughter of the famous criminologist, Cesare Beccaria (see On Crimes and Punishments, also in WLAIT 7: Italian Literature and Its Times).

The betrothed manzoni new translation