Narrative
The poem tells the story of a Venetian lady, Laura, whose husband, Giuseppe (or "Beppo" for short), has been lost at sea for the past three years. According to Venetian customs, and without shedding too many tears, she finally takes on a Cavalier Servente, simply called "the Count". But when the two of them attend the Venetian Carnival, where she is duly admired for her beauty by all the men, she is closely observed by a Turk who turns out to be her missing husband. Beppo explains that he has been captured and enslaved, but was freed by a band of pirates that he joined. Now, with the money he made through his life of piracy, he has returned to be re-baptized and reclaim his wife. Laura returns to Beppo, and he and the Count become "friends".
Read more about this topic: Beppo (poem)
Famous quotes containing the word narrative:
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)