Venice: Pure City
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Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial—-a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the ultimate city. Publishers Weekly Novelist and biographer Ackroyd (The Canterbury Tales) provides a history of and meditation on the actual and imaginary Venice in a volume as opulent and paradoxical as the city itself. Structured and organized with a fluidity that reflects its many-faceted subject, he launches his tour de force with the basics of Venetian geography, hydrology, and climate before turning to history and architecture. The narrative continues to develop around themes both usual and unexpected such as trade and gossip or subjects such as the city's fabled churches, its love of sexuality, and theater. As it glides along, it gracefully incorporates tidbits about such traditions as the cabins on gondolas and the masks worn during Carnival. How Ackroyd deftly catalogues the overabundance of the city's real and literary tropes and touchstones is itself a kind of tribute to La Serenissima, as Venice is called, and his seductive voice is elegant and elegiac. The resulting book is, like Venice, something rich, labyrinthine and unique that makes itself and its subject both new and necessary. (Oct.)
List of IllustrationsMapI City from the Sea1 Origins 32 Water, Water Everywhere 173 Mirror, Mirror 30II The City of Saint Mark4 The Saint Comes 375 Refuge 426 Against Nature 517 Stones of Venice 57III Ship of State8 "Let it be everlasting" 639 The Chosen People 7210 The Prison House 7911 Secrets 8312 Chronicles 93IV Republic of Commerce13 The Merchants of Venice 10114 The Endless Drama 12015 Wheels within Wheels 137V Empire of Trade16 The Lion City 15117 Cities in Collision 16618 A Call to Arms 176VI Timeless City19 Bells and Gondolas 18320 Iustitia 18821 Against the Turks 192VII The Living City22 The Body and the Building 20323 Learning and Language 21524 Colour and Light 22725 Pilgrims and Tourists 234VIII The Art of Life26 Hurrah for Carnival 24327 A Divine Art 25428 The Eternal Feminine 26729 What to Eat? 283IX Sacred City30 Divine and Infernal 28931 Of Belief 299X The Shadows of History32 Decline and Fall? 31133 Death in Venice 328XI City of Myth34 The Map Unrolls 34535 The Huddled Family 35436 Moon and Night 36237 While the Music Lasts 366A Venetian Chronology 377Bibliography 381Index 387
