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Chargement... Lavinia (édition 2008)par Ursula K. Le Guin
Information sur l'oeuvreLavinia par Ursula K. Le Guin
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Beautiful, rich writing brings the story to life. ( ) A slow, patient, magical retelling and reimagining of myths and mythical times. I loved the subtle, delicate way in which Le Guin wrote the characters and their world. There was also fiction seeping into the real world, shaping it, and vice versa, an idea that appeals to me. P.S. I should probably read the Aeneid. I know the story, having somehow absorbed it from different sources. But Ancient Greece was my “first love”, so Roman authors never called to me in the same way Homer did. This was a mistake, I think. Lavinia, a Latin princess, has many suitors but she is not interested in any of them until Aeneas arrives from Troy. Another woman from legend gets the chance to tell her own story, but she herself also reflects on whether she actually exists outside the story as told by Vergil. Enjoyable but if even the main character isn't sure whether she exists it's difficult to feel any emotional involvement in what's going on.
Lavinia is a historical novel set in mythical antiquity, Bronze Age Italy in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Le Guin has taken a (very) minor character from Virgil’s epic The Aeneid - in the poem Aeneas’s last wife Lavinia has no line of dialogue whatsoever - and given her voice. And a powerful and seemingly authentic voice too. The landscape, homes, religion, politicking, people and battles are all convincingly portrayed. When reading this you feel as if you are there, immersed in prehistory. Even the scenes in the place of oracles where Lavinia talks to the apparition she knows only as the poet - she could merely be dreaming of course - have the stamp of authority. At any rate Lavinia believes in him, and his revelations are borne out by events. There is, too, enough of a body count - foretold by the poet in a long, disturbing list - to satisfy the bloodthirsty. For Lavinia starts a war. Not by allowing herself to be taken by men, she says (in a beautifully understated inference to the much more famous Helen) but instead by choosing one for herself. I quibble slightly at who actually chooses Aeneas for Lavinia; she is swayed not only by the lack of suitability of the other candidates for her hand but also by her conversations with the poet. Otherwise she is a strong decisive character, who stands up to both her father, the King Latinus, and mother, Amata, and later to Ascanius, Aeneas’s son by his previous marriage. Given the book’s context the perennial follies of men are an unsurprising theme of Lavinia, the character and the novel. Despite its setting the book was on the short list for the BSFA Award for best novel of 2009, which on the face of it is baffling, even if Le Guin is a stalwart of the genres of SF and fantasy. I suppose its proposers could argue that since in the book Lavinia speaks with the ghost of a poet not yet born in her time there is an element of fantasy present. (Le Guin uses the spelling Vergil. I know his Latin name was Vergilius but in my youth the poem was always known as Virgil’s Aeneid.) True too, the past is always a different country. Fictionally it takes as much imagination to invest it with verisimilitude as it does to describe an as yet unrealised (SF) future. Except - sometimes - you can research the past. This is an admirably realised and executed novel, though, whichever genre you wish to pigeon-hole it with. Or you could say, as I do, that it is simply an excellent novel, full stop. Prix et récompensesListes notables
Comme Hélène de Sparte j'ai causé une guerre. La sienne, ce fut en se laissant prendre par les hommes qui la voulaient ; la mienne, en refusant d'être donnée, d'être prise, en choisissant mon homme et mon destin. L'homme était illustre, le destin obscur : un bon équilibre. Dans l'Énéide, Virgile ne la cite qu'une fois. Jamais il ne lui donne la parole. Prise dans les filets du poète qui n'écrira l'épopée des origines de Rome que des siècles plus tard et sans avoir le temps de l'achever avant sa mort, Lavinia transforme sa condition en destin. De ce qui sera écrit elle fait une vie de son choix. Et cela dans la douceur amère et la passion maîtrisée que suscite son improbable position : elle se veut libre mais tout est dit. Lavinia a obtenu le Locus Award 2009, le prix de la plus prestigieuse revue américaine consacrée au domaine de l'imaginaire. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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