Oct 15, 2008
The Valley of Decision | The Valley of Decision
At a glance:
- Author: Edith Newbold Jones
- First Published: 1902
- Type of Plot: Historical romance
- Time of Work: From the mid-1700’s until the French Revolution
- Setting: Northern Italy, with excursions to Milan, Rome, Florence, and Venice
- Principal Characters: Odo Valsecca, Fulvia Vivaldi, Abate Cantapresto, Count Lelio Trescorre, Carlo Gamba
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Social reform, Power, personal or social, Politics, Love or romance, Revolutions, Eighteenth century, Italy or Italians, Peasantry or peasants
- Locales: Italy
The Novel
This two-volume romance chronicles the rise to power of Odo Valsecca during the intellectual
and political tumult which preceded the French Revolution. During his childhood and early manhood,
Odo comes in close contact with all the major factions—the peasantry, the clergy, the liberal
freethinkers, and the nobility—which have a vital stake in maintaining or subverting the
antiquated power structure based on rigid class distinctions and superstitious religious traditions.
How Odo’s actions and ideals are shaped by these forces and the traditions that they...
[The entire page is 2641 words long]
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