Robert et al.:
By now you have received a mountain of biographical information
and some opinion. My own Anglo-Saxon take is that Salgari was very much
within the late 19th/early 20th century tradition of the ripping yarn set
in exotic locales, with the main difference that (as compared to Kipling,
say), the protagonists were often indigenous peoples rather than
imperialists. That latter feature is why some people seem to regard them
as modern, but the fact remains that they present broad cultural
stereotypes of a type that many people would find embarassing and even
offensive, so don't look for translations any time soon. (Still, they
make great reads, the same way the basic ideology of H. Rider Haggard is
dreadful but the narrative is fun.)
I got into Salgari in a moment of confusion, when I mixed him up
with Rafael Sabatini, who wrote terrific swashbuckling books (Captain
Blood, Sword of Islam, etc.) at a slightly later date -- and who, it turns
out, wasn't Italian at all (or at least didn't write in Italian).
Jim Grubb
On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, COLASACCO, ROBERT wrote:
> Thank you Dr. Grubb. I admit, although I was too imbarrassed to pronounce,
> that I have never before this post ever heard of Salgari. When did he write?
> Maybe a short bit of information on his life and work? If that's not asking
> too much. I did check the internet but did not find anything that was
> informative in that way. Although I didn't have time to view every page, the
> few I did look at contained lists of one or more of his works among lists of
> works by other italian writers. Indexes, is what I mean.
> Robert Colasacco
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