TOW #3 IRB / The Venetian Years / Giacoma Casanova / Translated By Arthur Machen (pg 1-156)

TOW #3 IRB / The Venetian Years / Giacoma Casanova / Translated By Arthur Machen (pg 1-156)

            Giacoma Casanova was a Venetian adventurer, author, intellectual and con artist who explored 19^th century Europe and is known world wide for his various affairs with women.  In The Venetian Years, a book written in conjunction with five other books to entertain the European aristocracy, Casanova is a young boy living in Venice under the guidance of his loving grandmother.  Casanova learns many skills in his young life like religion, philosophy, science and many languages such as Greek and Latin, which he utilizes further in the text to become a seminary student and a public speaker.  As The Venetian Years progresses in time Casanova has to deal with the death of his grandmother, intense legal proceedings as well as being imprisoned on a remote Venetian island where he uses his quick wit and cunning intellect to overcome his predicament and in act revenge on the man who put him there in the first place.

Casanova starts off the first chapter of The Venetian Years with insight into his “family pedigree.”  This family pedigree is a clear appeal to ethos, especially for this time period, which he uses to further his purpose of entertaining his readers with his own exciting life.  Casanova’s pedigree goes as far back as 1428 A.D. which is impressive for the time period which puts Casanova on are above the level of his audience, which is the aristocratic men of Europe.  At this time in European history an author would be most likely read or printed if they had famous family members or they themselves were already popular or well known.  So by appealing to ethos with his own family pedigree Casanova was able to make his memoirs a lot more interesting to Europe’s superficial aristocracy.

Arthur Machen is a Welsh writer, and serves as the english translator for Casanova's memoirs, who was born on the third of March, 1863 and died on the fifteenth of December 1947.  He is known for his work in mystic fiction often pertaining to his interest in the psychological implications of the supernatural.  Arthur Machen wrote the books The Great God PAN and The Three Imposters. 

Giacoma Casanova: Courtesy NNDB

Voller, Jack G.   "Arthur Machen."  The Literary Gothic.  26 Sep. 2012. Web. 29 Sep.

2013.