Domnei

Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship (1920) is a comic fantasy novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly swineherd can rise to be Count of Poictesme, Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship is one of Cabell’s best-known works of fiction, and is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. “Then Perion knew that vain regret had turned his brain, very certainly, for it seemed the door had opened and Dame Melicent herself had come, warily, into the panelled gloomy room. It seemed that Melicent paused in the convulsive brilliancy of the firelight, and stayed thus with vaguely troubled eyes like those of a child newly wakened from sleep.” As the daughter of the legendary Dom Manuel, Count of Poictesme, Melicent is often seen not for the woman she is, but as a symbol of an idealized, courtly love. Attracting the most chivalrous men of the kingdom, she unwittingly sparks a terrible conflict between Perion de la Forêt and Demetrios of Anatolia, both of whom seem determined to prove their love at any cost. Set in a fictionalized France of the 13th century, Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship is a captivating story of fantasy and adventure featuring a flawed hero whose mythical world is not entirely different from our own. Cabell’s work has long been described as escapist, his novels and stories derided as fantastic and obsessive recreations of a world lost long ago. To read Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship, however, is to understand that the issues therein—the struggle for power, the unspoken distance between men and women—were vastly important not only at the time of its publication, but in our own, divisive world. This edition of James Branch Cabell’s Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship is a classic of fantasy and romance reimagined for modern readers.

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