Renzo in Milan

Abstract

Alessandro Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed was in many respects a novelty in the panorama of the Romantic historical novel.¹ Written in the first half of the nineteenth century (three editions appeared between 1821 and 1840), the novel is the only one Manzoni ever wrote and, more importantly perhaps, one of the first novels, if not the first, that places a peasant as the hero of the entire work. To be sure, as the title of the first edition (Fermo e Lucia) suggests, the heroes are both the peasant Renzo and his fiancée Lucia, but it becomes quite apparent from the hero’s first appearance in the novel that the narrator thoroughly enjoys the opportunities the main character offers for general remarks on the embarrassing aspects of the human soul. Furthermore, Manzoni takes advantage of those episodes to make political statements revealing of the ideology of the writer, converted to Catholicism in 1810.²