References in Literature and History
Mark Twain visited Venice in the summer of 1867. He dedicated much of The Innocents Abroad, chapter 23 to describing the curiosity of urban life with gondolas and gondoliers.
The first act of Gilbert and Sullivan's two-act comic operetta The Gondoliers is set in Venice, and the show's two protagonists (as well as its men's chorus) are of the eponymous profession, even though the political irony that makes up the core of the show has much more to do with British society than Venice.
The Japanese manga Aria follows a young woman named Akari as she trains as an apprentice gondolier in Neo-Venezia, a city on a terraformed Mars based on Venice.
Read more about this topic: Gondola
Famous quotes containing the words literature and/or history:
“I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don’t have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)