Product Description

When the young Chevalier des Grieux first sets eyes on the exquisitely beautiful and charming Manon Lescaut they fall passionately in love. But his happiness turns to bitter despair when he discovers that Manon is mercenary and immoral, and has taken a rich lover to pay for their life of pleasure. A broken man, he swears to stay away from her, but cannot. Just as the Chevalier is helpless to end their relationship, so Manon is incapable of giving up the source of her income, and the lovers enter a destructive cycle that can only end in tragedy. Manon Lescaut (1731) is a devastating depiction of obsessive love and a haunting portrait of a captivating but dangerous woman.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #276041 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-28
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Antoine-Francois Prevost was born in 1697. Educated by the Jesuits, he entered the army, later returning to the Jesuits, before becoming a Benedictine monk with the congregation of Saint-Maur. However, his taste for the wordly life led him to flee the cloister in 1728 after which he spent the next six years in exile in Holland. He began writing in 1728 and Mamon Lescaut casued a sensation on its publication in 1731. He died in 1763. Leonard Tancock was a Fellow of University College, London until his death in 1986. He translated many works from French for the Penguin Classics. Jean Sgard is a Professor of French Literature at the Stendhal University in Grenoble.

Customer Reviews

Prevost's Major Work
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.

modern ,
Even today, this novella stands the test of time, treating as it does the timeless topics of love, betrayal, egotism and punishment.
I would highly recommend this if you are interested in the flaws of human nature as the heroine of this short novel has so much to teach us and continues to shock us even in the 21st century.

A classic of literature
This book was prosecuted for its content when published. For the earnest reader the book is a detail narrative of the lifes and errants of people pre-French revolution.
The books writer was a man of deep culture and the use of the language: form and content makes it an enjoyable lecture.
This is a book that can satisfy both: the light reader (Manon's adventures are a joy to follow) and the earnest reader (with a deep knowledge of the period).