Manon Lescaut (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Abbe Prevost (Author), Leonard Tancock (Translator), Jean Sgard (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: April 1, 1992

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The tragic love story Manon Lescaut has been the model for operas (by Puccini, Massenet and Henze) and films for years. This French classic by the Abb‚ Pr‚vost, retranslated for the first time in 52 years by Steve Larkin, shows remarkable resiliency more than 200 years after its original publication. Set in Paris and Louisiana around 1720, it is the archetypal 18th-century romance, with the noble des Grieux as devoted lover and the worldly Manon as inconstant mistress.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (April 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140445595
• ISBN-13: 978-0140445596
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic For A Reason, November 20, 2000

By 

Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Manon Lescaut (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

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.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Girl from Wrong Side of Town Jinxes Silver Spooner", April 19, 2000

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Manon Lescaut (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Many years ago I read the classic Chinese novel "Chin Ping Mei" in which overindulgence in sex, wine, and food occurs so regularly that by the end of the hundreds of pages, the reader is glutted and uninterested in more. This, people say, was the Buddhist message of the novel-that the sensual, material world is meaningless. MANON LESCAUT reminded me of that novel because the single moralizing theme-the wasted life of a talented young aristocrat who falls madly in love with a girl of dubious character-dominates so completely that nothing else really matters. The various characters, while potentially interesting, are never built up much, due to subordination to the moral lesson. No matter how many times the beautiful Manon betrays her impetuous lover, he forgives her and indulges in his passion more than ever. His father and friends despair. Jail, murder, betrayal, gambling, prostitution, and eventual exile are only some of the results this passion delivers. The denouement of the novel occurs in far-off New Orleans, about which, it seemed to me, the author had absolutely no idea. An opera was later written based on this minor classic of French literature. I could not say that it is a wonderful piece of writing, nor that many readers will thrill to its ups and downs. You can read it in a short while; it will hold your attention and you will have the satisfaction of being able to say you read it. But, at the end of the day, French literature offers a lot more than MANON LESCAUT.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Common Man's Point of View., December 19, 2011

By 

Richard Rawls "Richard Ardle Rawls" (Dublin Ga USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Manon Lescaut (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

A lot of people give poor Manon a very hard time, comparing her to the first sinner, Eve, who by the way, is no more guilty of sin than Adam. For it's time in history this love story was was right up there with the raciest soap operas of all time, even being banned in parts of France, but the best way to make a book popular with everyone is to ban it. That simply guarantees it's success. The book was written by Antoine-Francois Prevost, who was in and out of schools, studying to become a priest and must have come close enough to earn the title of Abbe, so that people started calling him Abbe Prevost.

This novel was written 117 years before a story very similar to it entitled La Dame aux Camelias (The Lady of the Camelias) by Alexandre Dumas (fils) or junior, from which many plays, movies, ballets and operas form thier basis.La Dame aux Camï¿1/2lias (Oxford World's Classics) The opera is La Travaota by Giuseppe Verdi. This story too, spawned many plays, movies, ballets and at least two operas. I have both these ballets, and they piqued my interest into the reading of the novels. They are both very moving and touching love stories.

Manon was only around 15 years old when the then 17 year old de Grieux met and fell in love with her. She was a very beautiful, but larcenous little creature from the very beginning, yet de Grieux was not above living off the wages of sin either. So, his downfall was as much his fault as hers, maybe a bit more so, because he had the advantages of seminary training, and she had no formal education. Her family was sending her to become a nun when she ran away with de Grieux in the first place. Manon caused de Grieux much heartache, but he was so much in love, he simply could not give her up, even though he suspected that she would take up with the very next man who offered her the luxuries she desired. I can understand it. Yes, I was in love once, to a mate who caused me heartache too, but one mistake was all she was guilty of, and forgiveness was all she needed. Forgiveness was offered to Manon also, but she could not learn from her mistakes, and she wound up being deported to a penal colony in New Orleans, America where hundreds of prostitutes and other malcontents were sent to be rid of them. Poor Manon; her beauty, even there, was to work against her well being, and since de Grieux had followed her to New Orleans, when a man there tried to take her, de Grieux fought for her, and wounded the man who just happened to be the nephew of the Govenor of the colony. De Grieux was afraid he had killed the man, so he and Manon ran off into the wilderness where poor sick Manon died a few days latter. You may tear up when you read how de Grieux had to bury Manon. It's very, very sad, and many readers have been moved by this story. This kind of love story never grows old. Look at Romeo and Juliet for instance. No, it never grows old.