Manon Lescaut

by Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles, Prevost a F, N De Courcelles, et al.

Book Overview

"The sweetness of her glance, or rather my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin, did not allow me to hesitate for a moment."
So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early eighteenth-century Paris--with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses-via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement in the treeless wastes of Louisiana. It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic: how reliable a witness is Des Grieux, Manon's lover, whose tale he narrates? Is Manon a thief and a whore, the image of love itself, or a thoroughly modern woman? Pr vost is careful to leave the ambiguities unresolved, and to lay bare the disorders of passion.
This new translation includes the vignette and eight illustrations that were approved by Pr vost and first published in the edition of 1753.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199554927
• ISBN13: 9780199554928
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

extremely--I-don't-know-what

This novel was originally presented as an autobiographical novel, but certain elements do not seem true to life. --The hero falls in love at first sight, and the two continue to remember each other until the bitter end. --The heroine arouses the passion of 6 men through no effort on her own part. --The hero and heroine live an irresponsible lifestyle without ever putting in a single day of hard work, yet their friends continue to support them without a word of complaint. --The hero and heroine escape to a sandy wasteland within hiking distance of New Orleans. The novelist could never have been there because there is no such place. This novel aroused operatic settings by 3 composers. How, I don't know. It's not the translator's fault. She provides a helpful introduction and helpful footnotes.

Great Novel

Great book. The best of what French literature has to offer. A story of deceit, love, devotion and dedication.

Classic For A Reason

The Abbe Prevost was the first translator of Richardson's novels in France, as well as a precursor of the Romantic movement. This tale was the inspiration for two famous operas (Massenet and Puccini) as well as a forerunner of many formulaic love stories that came after. One has to remember that this was written in the earlry part of the 18th Century, and there was not any formula before it, at least in terms of the heroine. Manon is the anti-heroine, the woman-in-red, the Eve that gives her partner over to the fates as a result of her easily-compromised sensibility. She can't turn down her creature comforts, even when it means sacrificing her "true love," her Romeo, for an older, but more solvent, lover, in instance after instance. Manon is one of the first unsympathetic heroines in literature (let's forget about Eve if we can) , a precursor of Emma Bovary in many respects. Let's also remember that she appears in during the , "golden age" of sentimental fiction in France and Europe generally (the ealry 1700s) . Women are depicted in this era as archetypically virtuous and angelic, or unambiguously sexual (thinking particularly of the late Restoration English stage). What we have in Manon is an amalgam, neither entirely saint, nor entirely sinner. She is the Madonna and the Magdaleine, part angel, part succubus, but an entirely new persona on the European literary stage. This is the reason that she had such an impression on the European artistic imagination. She represents a new dichotomy, a new figure that represents what Henry Adams would have suggested as a representation of the sacred and the profane, the mud and the cathedral.