Confessions of Cherubino

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Bertha Harris Wyland (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Guy Owen

Abstract: Confessions of Cherubino is a novel concerning the characteristics and varieties of love, both physical and abstract, as represented by members of a single family. Music, generally, is the chief device used to unite, concretely and symbolically, these diverse individuals; specifically, the aria "voi che sapete" from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, sung in the opera by the adolescent Cherubino, is woven, in various guises, through this novel as an expression of its theme. The characters interact through habitual modes in the family relationship, revealing themselves through violence, exotic sexual behavior, and through extraordinarily blunt inner monologues that have an active effect on people both living and dead who surround them. All such action, however, is achieved in an atmosphere of ordinary tenderness, separating it from any hint of glamor or abnormality that might be rendered in a more conventional description. The unusual, divorced from all possible shock value by its inclusion as simply another stream flowing throughout dailiness, becomes, possibly with even greater sensation, the usual. The situations of the book are balanced entirely on its last sentence: that the characters, in conclusion and also in beginning, are "approaching the conditions of perfect love."

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Language: English
Date: 1968

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