Casanova's Life and Times: Living in the Eighteenth Century

David John Thompson

Ιαν 2024 · Pen and Sword History

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This is both the life of Giacomo Casanova and a chronicle of eighteenth-century Europe. Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was born the son of a moderately poor acting family at a time when the stage carried enormous social stigma. Yet in his own lifetime he achieved celebrity across Europe, rubbing shoulders with numerous of the eighteenth century's greatest men and women, from Frederick the Great to Catherine the Great, from Voltaire to Albrecht von Haller, from Pope Benedict XIV to Pope Clement XIII. It was a fame that had little to do with his romantic exploits. This was to come later, following upon the posthumous publication of his magnificent History of My Life. An adventurer and a man of learning, his was an extraordinary life whose story was intertwined with the story of eighteenth-century Europe. To try to understand this fascinating character we need also to try to understand the period in which he lived. This is the aim of Casanova's Life and Times.

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DAVE THOMPSON is a retired teacher, a history writer and blogger with a degree and masters in History. He has long been intrigued by the controversial life of the adventurer and man of letters Giacomo Casanova and the continuing difficulty successive generations of scholars have found in getting to grips with him. Everyone who encounters him, specialist and non-specialist, is faced with the challenge of historical and moral complexity. The hope is that this project, of which this is the first of two volumes, will provide not so much clear-cut answers to that challenge but a helpful framework within which to consider it.