Product Description

`Few venture as thou hast in the alarming paths of sin.' This is the final judgement of Satan on Victoria di Loredani, the heroine of Zofloya, or The Moor (1806), a tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in Venice in the last days of the fifteenth century. The novel follows Victoria's progress from spoilt daughter of indulgent aristocrats, through a period of abuse and captivity, to a career of deepening criminality conducted under Satan's watchful eye. Charlotte Dacre's narrative deftly displays her heroine's movement from the vitalized position of Ann Radcliffe's heroines to a fully conscious commitment to vice that goes beyond that of `Monk' Lewis's deluded Ambrosio. The novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of Victoria's intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya that transgresses taboos both of class and race. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron and Shelley, Zofloya has been unduly neglected. Contradicting idealized stereotypes of women's writing, the novel's portrait of indulged desire, gratuitous cruelty, and monumental self-absorption retains considerable power to disturb. The introduction to this edition, the first for nearly 200 years, examines why Zofloya deserves to be read alongside established Gothic classics as the highly original work of an intriguing and unconventional writer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41899 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780199549733
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
Michasiw's introduction is accessible, capacious in its knowledge of eighteenth-century gothic fiction, and informed regarding recent developments in gothic and Romantic studies. Besides providing a good general overview of Dacre's life and literary career, it deftly unpacks the issues raised by Zofloya's handling of race and female desire and explains Dacre's long absence from literary studies with force and efficiency. -- Michael Gamer, Romantic Circles Reviews, December 1998

About the Author

Kim Ian Michasiw is Associate Professor of English at York University, Ontario.

Customer Reviews

Two novels in one
This actually seems like two separate novels. The first section describes Victoria, a spoiled woman who's mother leaves her father for a libertine. The first Volume and a half describe her life and her attempts at becoming her own woman. But the telling is quick and boring. The second half tells of only a few months of Victoria's life, and her strange love for Zofloya, the moorish servant of her husband's brother. Fromt his point on, the novel becomes a harrowing tale of murder and revenge. Intensely violent, and very entertaining, the second half almost makes of for the rather lackluster beginning.

The Poisoned Pages
The text is of particular interst for its depiction of "subtle poison that which is extracted from and administered by books" (Dacre)The act of writing and reading are "sovereign poisons," an interesting notion from a woman writer in the early 19th century.

A good study in Gothic Literature. Sex and violence galore.
Kim Ian Michasiw is the associate professor at my university (York U in Toronto!) and he's awesome. He brilliantly sets up his ideas in the introduction of this work and provides, as clearly as he can, something of a chronology (much is yet to be known about Dacre's life). The book is an interesting study in gothic literature and feminine writing circa Jane Austen.
Eighteenth-century trash, actually. Lots of sex and violence, elegantly written. Also interesting in its portrayal of race and the sexualization of "The moor". A perverse work, actually.