Manon Lescaut

by Abbe Prevost, Angela Scholar, Angela Scholar (Translator)

Overview

The inspiration for three films and several operas, this classic of French literature is set in Regency Paris and Louisiana around 1720. A tragic love story, it's also an epic adventure story with three infidelities, three escapes, three abductions and two murders. The action spans two continents and a social range extending from the aristocracy to the social outcast, from pillars of the establishment to pimps and prostitutes.

Manon Lescaut's ambiguous love story has a transcendent significance: Is it a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers to which passion, blindly followed, can lead? Or does it illustrate the redemptive power of love? After all, Des Grieux's perseverance in his devotion to Manon eventually brings about a profound change of heart in her and seems to make possible a lasting happiness based on deep mutual affection. The ambiguity persists to the end, when death snatches that happiness away.

Author Biography: Abbe Prevost (1697-1763) had an eventful life, including time spent in an English prison for forgery. A soldier, priest and Protestant convert, he was also a journalist, pamphleteer, translator of Richardson's novels and, in his declining years, a hack writer. His prolific output of novels, biographies and histories has long since been forgotten, with the exception of Manon Lescaut, his masterpiece.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199554928
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	02/15/2009
Series:	Oxford World's Classics Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.60(d)

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.

Table of Contents

Manon LescautIntroduction
Bibliography
Translator's Note

Manon Lescaut

Part I
Part II
Notes