Manon Lescaut (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

by Abbe Prevost (Author), Leonard Tancock (Translator), Jean Sgard (Introduction) "I MUST take you back to the time when I first met the Chevalier des Grieux..." (more)
Key Phrases: dun homme, hundred pistoles, thousand écus, New Orleans, Lieutenant-General of Police, Chevalier des Grieux (more...)

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 the Paperback edition.

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.

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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: 7.5 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #187,501 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 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 (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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.

16 of 20 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 (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

3 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Novel, November 22, 2001

By A Customer

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