The Leopard

1. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard is set in a period of change, a period of national and social readjustment which brings with it turmoil and upheaval. The period involved is the early period of the Risorgimento. During the second half of the nineteenth century, between 1859 and 1871, a change came over Europe as several nation states unified into larger empires more in keeping with the countries we know in this century. In The Leopard, the Risorgimento is seen from the point of view of the people of Sicily, through the eyes of Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina. The Prince has a nephew, Tancredi, who has been his favorite but who betrays him by making an alliance with the rebels headed by Garibaldi. Tancredi later seeks a political alliance by marrying the greedy daughter of a political leader who represents a new era and who has no respect for the old ways represented by Fabrizio. Don Fabrizio watches as his social class, his rule, and his way of life are supplanted by this new regime. As he watches the rise of this new political power and the decline of his own, he also experiences a decline in his health and vitality, contrasted with the youth and vigor of his nephew and others in the new regime. Death is the only conclusion, death both of a way of life and of the old leader as well. This is not a novel that wallows in this sense of loss, however, for in the end the ailing Prince comes to see that this is only the natural course of events and th

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