In the Company of the Courtesan (2006) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters edit see section history

• Fiammetta: courtesan
• Bucino: Courtesan's loyal dwarf servant and the narrator of the book
• La Draga: Mysterious blind healer
• Meragosa: The hag that let Fiammetta's mother die and stold from her
• Gabriella: House servant to Fiammetta
• Aretino: Evil "journalist" who tried to ruin Fiammetta's reputation in Rome and would be pimp
• Tiziano: Add a description of this character.
• Pietro
• Mauro: Cook to Fiammetta
• Alberini
• Marcantonio
• Elena Crusichi: La Draga's real name
• Illy
• Ascanio
• Marcell
• Foscari
• Adriana
• Giulio Romano
• Giberti
• Abdullah Pashna

Quotes edit see section history

• “She looks at me gently for a while, but whatever more she sees--and I know it is there to be seen--she lets it be. It makes me ashamed, for she is more generous with me than I ever was with her.”

  Bucino

• “I know what she is thinking. That she will never have those feelings. And she wants to have them. Oh, how much she wants to...I have seen it before, the way women yearn more for a child when they have fallen in love. It is part of the disease, like the ague that goes with fever. Maybe the real lover's prick goes deep enough to ignite some loning in the womb. Maybe it is the promise of a future, something left over once the passion is spent.”

  Bucino

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• I look at her and think how lovely she is when her spirit is alight, and how it is the way people deal with hardship, rather than success, that sets them apart. I swear I would live with her poor rather than anyone else rich.

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• While other cities are wealthy, Venice is priceless…while other states are secure, Venice is impenetrable. Venice: the greatest, the loveliest, the oldest, the most just, the most peaceful. Venice—La Serenissima.

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• How would it be if the end was not Heaven or Hell but just an absence of life? My God, I swear that would be Heaven enough for most of us.”

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• Which only goes to prove that while God may hate sinners, he sometimes saves his greatest gifts for them.

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• “he is a philosopher as well as a poet, and he warns of how carnal love between men and women can become a disease, rotting the will and pulling them into madness toward Hell, while love of God transcends the body and frees the soul to start its journey into Heaven.”

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• By a Florentine named Niccolò Machiavelli, a man who was thrown out of government and subjected to the strappado and who used his exile to write a treatise about the art of governing, which he sees as based less on Christian ideals than on pragmatism. For him, the most successful rulers control by force and fear rather than consent.

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• But anyone who has been young knows that the great grief of love is that your body feels the most when it knows the least.

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• The gray-green marble façade of Santa Maria dei Miracoli emerges from the gloom like some great ice statue,

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• Revolution is a young man’s fantasy; there is so much of life ahead in which to change your mind.

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• (I am a dolt when it comes to such things, though I like the way his scarlet Madonna amazes all the men beneath her as she swirls up to Heaven above the altar of Santa Maria dei Frari).

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Venice
• Rome
• Heaven
• Constantinople
• Petrarch
• Indies
• Mantua
• Florence
• Vatican
• Ghetto
• Rialto
• Germany
• Arcadia

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Sarah Dunant (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 823.914

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Historical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

More Books Like This edit see section history