Biography casanova

It is hard to distinguish between the writer Giacomo Casanova, born in Venice in 1725, and the protagonist of his monumental Story of My Life ("neither the story of a famous man nor a novel"), the multi-volume source of his fame as a symbol of unabashed, libertine sexuality; and it is harder still to neglect the countless other books and films that have contributed to fashioning his sexual persona, a carnival mask that has taken on a life of its own.

Ever since the Histoire (written from 1785 until his death in Bohemia, where he worked as the Count of Waldstein's librarian) was acquired by the publisher Brockhaus of Leipzig in 1821, another history has unfolded, that of its publication in various editions and languages: Only from 1960 to 1962 was the original French text released in its entirety (Casanova 1960–1962).

Marie Françoise Luna has provided the best reconstruction to date of Casanova's "autobiographical project": not simply the confession