In Renaissance Florence, a scholar's daughter watches her charming husband betray everyone around him while the reformer Savonarola rises and falls. Eliot's densely researched historical novel.
Books mentioned in Romola (6)
Miscellanea by Angelo Poliziano: “But the eyes of the father had long been silent, and the eyes of the daughter were bent on the Latin pages of Politian's `Miscellanea,' from which she was reading aloud at the eightieth chapter, to the following effect:--”
Inferno by Dante Alighieri: “I have seen men whose beards have so invaded their cheeks, that one might have pitied them as the victims of a sad, brutalising chastisement befitting our Dante's Inferno, if they had not seemed to strut with a strange triumph in their extravagant hairiness."”
Carnival Song by Lorenzo de' Medici: “Chi vuol esser lieto sia, Di doman non c'è certezza."[1] … _Carnival Song by Lorenzo de' Medici_.”
Isolario by Cristoforo Buondelmonte: “I foresee a work which will be a useful supplement to the `Isolario' of Christoforo Buondelmonte, and which may take rank with the `Itineraria' of Ciriaco and the admirable Ambrogio Traversari.”
Itineraria by Ciriaco d'Ancona: “I foresee a work which will be a useful supplement to the `Isolario' of Christoforo Buondelmonte, and which may take rank with the `Itineraria' of Ciriaco and the admirable Ambrogio Traversari.”
Aulularia by Plautus: “And though--since I agree with the divine Petrarca, when he declares, quoting the `Aulularia' of Plautus, who again was indebted for the truth to the supreme Greek intellect, `Optimam foeminam nullam esse, alia licet alia pejor sit'--I cannot boast that thou art entirely lifted out of that lower…”