Bøger af Abbe Prevost

This edition of "Manon Lescaut" incorporates an English introduction and footnotes. It assesses the persuasiveness of the self-justifying narrative which lies at the heart of the book, and on interpreting the motivation of the main characters whose tragic love-affair the novel charts.

Originally published in 1942, this book contains the French text of Abbe Prevost's 1731 novel Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, which inspired the 1893 opera by Puccini. The original novel was considered so scandalous that Prevost was forced to amend the original manuscript; the text reproduced here is from the altered 1753 edition.

"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? Prevost 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 Prevost and first published in the edition of 1753.