François Taillandier
Romancier, François Taillandier est notamment l’auteur d’Anielka (Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française) et de La Grande Intrigue, cycle romanesque en cinq volumes....
L ECRITURE DU MONDE TOME 1
Auteur
Parution :
06/03/2013
Collection :
Hors collection littérature française
WHEN THE WORLD WAS WRITTEN
L’écriture du monde is the first volume in a three-part historical account which will explore the dark centuries that lie between the official end of the Roman Empire in the West and the Eleventh Century, when kingdoms were being established and sketching the beginnings of our modern nation states. Centuries of slow cultural change: the spread of Christianity; the appearance of Roman art and of literature in “common” languages; the rise of Arab Muslim culture to the south of the Mediterranean while the Roman Empire stood its ground in the East and Constantinople.
This first volume covers the whole of the Sixth Century, a complicated, little known time when so much first began and when Mediterranean unity disappeared, creating the beginnings of a Europe separate from the East.
We discover the century through two remarkable lives.
First that of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (Cassiodorus), born around 485 and who died around 575, a Roman aristocrat who became an advisor to the barbarian king Theodoric, the new leader of Italy with his capital at Ravenna. The brutal recapture of Italy by Justinian crushed his dreams of reconciling the indigenous people and the incoming Ostrogoths. When he was 60 he founded a monastery in Calabria, and collected thousands of books (on philosophy, medicine, architecture, mathematics, literature, theology) and had them copied. This man, who died at the age of 90, was a witness to and a key player in a century of upheaval.
Towards 560, another people, the Lombards who were known as the Barbarians, seized power in Italy. The 17-year-old Bavarian princess Theodelinda set off alone for this country she knew nothing about and offered herself in marriage to King Authari. For more than twenty years she had considerable influence on how Italy developed. She ruled with a rod of iron, subjugating minor leaders in Lombardy and inciting them to respect Christianity while she herself became a representative for and an accomplice to Pope Gregory the Great. Theodelinda’s tomb still stands in Monza and she was canonised by the Catholic Church.
Cassiodorus, Theodelinda, Gregory: in a chaotic world these individuals strove to establish the spiritual, intellectual and political foundations for a new society, and saw the contours of our modern day Europe emerge.
François Taillandier is the author of Anielka, awarded the Grand Prix for a novel by the Académie Française, Stock, 1999, and Le Cas Gentile, Stock, 2001. In 2010 he published Time to turn, the last volume – after Option paradis, Telling, Il n’y a personne dans les tombes and Les romans vont où ils veulent – of a remarkably ambitious fictional project: La Grande Intrigue.
VIe siècle de notre ère. L’empire romain d’Occident s’est effondré, laissant place aux instables royaumes « barbares ». Constantinople cependant ne renonce pas à l’espoir de reprendre les territoires perdus. Au coeur de cette époque troublée, déchirée par les dissensions religieuses, deux figures historiques vont tenter de frayer les voies d’une société nouvelle.
Cassiodore, romain de vieille souche, intellectuel et homme d’État passé au service du roi ostrogoth Théodoric, nouveau maître de l’Italie, impulse une politique de paix, de tolérance et de fusion des populations. Ses projets anéantis par la tyrannie et la guerre, il se retire du monde pour fonder un monastère, le Vivarium, voué à la préservation de la culture ancienne, profane ou sacrée.
Théolinda, jeune princesse germanique promise à un roi franc, s’enfuit à seize ans pour l’Italie du nord, où elle s’offre au roi des Lombards, Autharis. Elle va se révéler une reine énergique, audacieuse, et jouer un rôle politique décisif, s’efforçant de stabiliser la conquête lombarde dans une alliance secrète avec le pape Grégoire le Grand.
C’est aussi une période inventive et foisonnante. Justinien à Constantinople fait édifier Sainte-Sophie, Clovis implante dans les Gaules la dynastie franque, Benoît de Nursie organise la vie monastique occidentale. Un moine nommé Denys établit le calendrier à partir de la naissance du Christ...
Ces temps obscurs et pourtant fondateurs sont retracés dans un tableau romanesque passionnant qui vient éclairer ce que nous apprend l’histoire.
288 pages
Format :
135 x 216 mm
EAN :
9782234064430
Prix :
22.00 €
