Journey into the World of The Betrothed

Renzo, Lucia and Alberto Angela: "Ulisse, il piacere della scoperta" travels through the pages of I promessi sposi, Alessandro Manzoni's masterpiece. It is not a school reading, but the fresco of an entire era: the seventeenth century. Alberto Angela demonstrates how the author used very accurate documentation concerning first of all the habits and customs of the time and the great historical events: the famine, the plague, the Thirty Years' War, the spinning mills, the duels. All these aspects are also explored in depth with the help of the Rai drama directed by Salvatore Nocita in 1989. Even more surprising is the correspondence of some characters in the novel with real-life figures: Don Rodrigo and the Unnamed are not only the fruit of Manzoni's imagination, but they are present - albeit with other names - in the "black" chronicles of the seventeenth century.