Resumen
Resumen de El diablo enamorado
Para quién es
For readers who love early Gothic tales, supernatural love stories and short classics they can finish in one sitting, with witty intrigue, temptation and a puzzle about who is deceiving whom.
De qué trata este libro
The Devil in Love is a short novel by the French writer Jacques Cazotte, first published in 1772. It tells of a young Spanish officer in Naples who thinks he is clever enough to summon a demon and keep it under his thumb. He is wrong about who holds the leash. Cazotte wrote it in the years before the French Revolution, when Paris was full of talk about magic, secret societies and the occult, and he mixes a ghost story with a comedy of manners.
The book is told by the young man himself, looking back on the adventure. It moves fast, in short chapters that read almost like scenes from a stage. You get a tale of temptation, a love story that may not be what it seems, and a puzzle about who is deceiving whom. It is also a study of pride and of how a clever mind talks itself into trouble. Let us begin where the trouble begins, with a dinner among soldiers in Naples.
En este resumen
- 1A boast among soldiers in NaplesFree
- 2Alvare calls up a spirit in the ruins
- 3A charming page enters his service
- 4The page becomes Biondetta
- 5What the story is really about
- 6How Cazotte tells the tale
Idea clave 1 de 6
A boast among soldiers in Naples
The story opens in Naples, where Alvare, a young captain in the Spanish king's guards, sits with fellow officers after a meal. Alvare is brave, proud and a little bored. His comrades are the sort of men who like to argue about everything under the sun, from women to war to the unseen world.
Talk turns to the occult sciences. One of the men, Soberano, is more serious than the rest, and he speaks of such matters as if he knows them from experience. He claims that people with the right knowledge can command spirits. The others laugh, but Alvare listens closely.
What Alvare wants is not wisdom. He wants to prove that he is bolder than the others. When Soberano hints that there is a way to call up a spirit and bend it to your will, Alvare declares that he is ready to try. Soberano warns him, but the warning only feeds his vanity.
This opening matters because it sets up the weakness the whole book will press on. Alvare is not a wicked man. He is young, curious and sure of himself, and he mistakes dares for courage. He treats the unseen world as a game he can win. Everything that follows grows from that one evening and from his wish to look fearless in front of his friends.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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Questions about El diablo enamorado
What is The Devil in Love about?
It follows Alvare, a young Spanish officer in Naples, who summons a spirit as a dare. The spirit takes the shape of a page and then a woman, and Alvare must decide whether to trust her.
Who is Biondetta in The Devil in Love?
Biondetta is the form a summoned spirit takes after first appearing as a page named Biondetto. She says she is a sylph in love with Alvare, though he doubts her.
When was The Devil in Love written?
Jacques Cazotte published it in 1772, in French, under the title Le Diable amoureux. It is a work of fiction, written when interest in magic and the occult was high in Paris.
Is The Devil in Love hard to read?
No. It is short, with brisk chapters and a clear first-person voice. The eighteenth-century style is polished and ironic, but the plot is easy to follow.
Is The Devil in Love a Gothic novel?
It is often seen as an early forerunner of Gothic and Romantic fantasy. It has a haunted setting, a seductive demon and a hero who cannot tell dream from fact, yet its tone is witty.