Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Deborah S. Lund

Critical Essay by Deborah S. Lund

SOURCE: "Of Doubtful Virtue: The Virago in C. F. Meyer's Angela Borgia," in Seminar, Vol. 28, No. 3, September, 1992, pp. 208-21.

In the following essay, Lund contends that the character of Angela Borgia "fails as a figure in the novella because of her unyielding 'masculine' strength of character."

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's last novella, Angela Borgia, first published in 1892, has long suffered at the hands of scholars and critics. It is frequently neglected as unworthy or untypical of Meyer's oeuvre, and has, when studied, been found to contain a series of flaws, often attributed to the waning artistic powers of the author. Uffe Hansen's exhaustive study [Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: "Angela Borgia." Zwischen Salpêtrière und Berggasse, 1986] has redeemed the novella in many respects by uncovering Meyer's true intent in writing it, namely to document through the medium of historical fiction developments in the science of psychology (particularly hypnosis) during...
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