Manon Lescaut

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The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon LescautTemplate:Hsp Template:Efn-num is a novel by Antoine François Prévost. It tells a tragic love story about a nobleman (known only as the ChevalierTemplate:NoteTag des Grieux) and a common woman (Manon Lescaut). Their decision to live together without marriage is the start of a moral decline that also leads to gambling, fraud, theft, murder, and Manon's death as a deportee in New Orleans.

The story was first published in 1731 as the final volume of Prévost's serial novel Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality.Template:Efn-num In 1733, all copies for sale in Paris were seized due to the volume's morally questionable content. This effective ban contributed to an increase in popularity, prompting unauthorized reprints. In 1753, Prévost published Manon Lescaut as a revised standalone book, which is now the most commonly reprinted version.

The novel was unusual for depicting Paris's "low life" and for discussing the lovers' money problems in numerical detail: both choices contribute to its realism and its aura of scandal. The story is narrated retroactively by des Grieux, an early example of the French genre of the confessional récit. Over the centuries, audiences have judged the character Manon differently. Eighteenth-century audiences saw her as an unworthy figure who inspired pity due to the sincerity of her love. Nineteenth-century responses saw her as a nearly mythological sex symbol, either a Template:Lang who corrupts des Grieux or a hooker with a heart of gold. Today, scholars tend to see Manon as a victim of broader social forces, who is misrepresented by des Grieux's narration of her experience.

The novel is regarded as a classic, and in 1991 it was the most reprinted novel in French literature, with over 250 editions over the preceding 260 years.Template:Sfn It has frequently been adapted into plays, ballets, films, and particularly operas. The most renowned adaptations are the operas Manon Lescaut by Daniel Auber (1856), Manon by Jules Massenet (1884), and Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini (1893).Template:Sfn

Plot summary

The seventeen-year-old Chevalier des Grieux, a seminary student and the younger son of a noble family, falls in love at first sight with Manon, a common woman on her way to a convent. They immediately run away together, and spend their meagre savings living pleasurably in Paris. Manon has sex with a Monsieur de B——Template:Efn-num for money; des Grieux forgives her. M. de B—— alerts des Grieux's family to his location, and des Grieux is forcibly brought home and confined to his room. Eventually, he enters St. Sulpice seminary with his friend Tiberge and spends a year as a successful student.

Manon reappears, and des Grieux abandons his plans to become a priest. Using wealth that Manon stole from M. de B——, they move to Chaillot. Their house burns down, and des Grieux begins to cheat gamblers for money. Their servants rob them, and Manon agrees to become the mistress of a Monsieur G—— M——. After accepting substantial gifts, she leaves his house while he awaits her in his bedroom. He has Manon and des Grieux arrested. Des Grieux is sent to St. Lazare (a religious institution for genteel moral correction), and Manon to La Salpêtrière (a harsh prison for "fallen women"). Des Grieux breaks out of his confinement, accidentally killing a porter during his escape, then bribes guards to smuggle Manon out of hers.

They return to Chaillot. Des Grieux borrows money from Tiberge. Manon rejects the advances of an Italian prince. They meet a young G—— M——, son of the G—— M—— whom they had earlier deceived, and decide to defraud him the same way. Manon receives his money and jewels; des Grieux hires thugs to detain him for a night; the couple eat his dinner and are about to sleep in his bed when his father arrives and has them arrested. They are imprisoned in the Template:Ill; des Grieux is freed by his father's influence, and Manon is deported to New Orleans as a correction girl.

Des Grieux accompanies Manon to America, pretending they are married. After some time living in idyllic peace, des Grieux asks the Governor, Étienne Perier, to officially wed him to Manon. The Governor instead decides to give Manon to his nephew, Synnelet. Des Grieux duels Synnelet and knocks him unconscious; thinking he has killed the man, the couple flee into the wilderness. Manon dies of exposure and des Grieux buries her, digging her grave with his broken sword. Heartbroken, he is taken back to France by Tiberge and returns to his aristocratic life.

Composition and publication

Antoine François Prévost was a French priest and author. In the 1710s he moved multiple times between a career in the military and a novitiate in the Jesuit priesthood. He joined the Benedictines of St Maur after an unhappy love affair, which has sometimes contributed to speculation that Manon Lescaut has autobiographical inspirations. In 1728, while a monk in Paris, he published the first two volumes of his serial novel Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality, Who Withdrew from the World.Template:Efn-num Template:Sfn He then left his abbey without permission, and his superiors gained a lettre de cachet for his arrest.Template:Sfn He fled to England.Template:Sfn While he was in exile, volumes three and four were published in Paris.Template:Sfn

In 1730, he moved to the Netherlands and signed a contract with the Compagnie des Libraires d'Amsterdam for three more volumes of Memoirs and Adventures.Template:Sfn Prévost likely composed Manon Lescaut in March and April 1731.Template:Sfn At the time, he was in Amsterdam, and was writing quickly to satisfy his contract.Template:Sfn The story was first published in May 1731, as volume seven of Memoirs and Adventures, alongside volumes five and six.Template:Sfn Beginning in 1733, the Compagnie des Libraires d'Amsterdam also published volume seven on its own, as it proved more popular than the rest of the series.Template:Sfn Template:Multiple image

In 1753, Prévost published a substantially revised edition of volume seven as a standalone publication.Template:Sfn The standalone volume was titled The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and of Manon Lescaut,Template:Efn-num Template:Sfn which was the subtitle of volume VII of Memoirs and Adventures.Template:Sfn This edition claimed on its title page to be published in Amsterdam by the Compagnie des Libraires, but was actually published in Paris by François Didot.Template:Sfn In this edition, Prévost modified some of his most sensationalist language,Template:Sfn added a new scene where Manon resists the seduction of an Italian prince,Template:Sfn and rewrote the ending to replace des Grieux's religious conversion with a more secular morality.Template:Sfn Manon Lescaut is the only novel for which Prévost published a revised edition.Template:Sfn The 1753 version of the novel is usually the basis of modern editions.Template:Sfn This edition also added nine illustrations, which made the book into more of a "luxury object", and also made it more challenging to pirate.Template:Sfn

Style

The narrative of Manon Lescaut is set apart from the main events of Memoirs and Adventures with a preface and a preamble, both ostensibly written by the unnamed "man of quality" who is the protagonist of the main novel.Template:Sfn The preface, titled "Note from the author" (Template:Langx), explains that the story was too large to include within the main narrative.Template:Sfn It also says the story will be a morally-instructive example for readers, who will learn not to imitate des Grieux.Template:Sfn In the preamble, the narrator witnesses a group of prostitutes being deported. Curious about a particularly beautiful one (Manon), he speaks with the lover travelling with her (des Grieux). Two years later, he encounters des Grieux again, and asks to hear the full story of his experience in America.Template:Sfn

The story is thus narrated retroactively as a long speech, delivered by des Grieux nine months after Manon's death.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn As such, it is an early example of the French genre of the confessional récit.Template:Sfn The primary verb tense is passé simple, a past-tense form that is only used in formal written French.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn All events are recounted in the first person, and shaped by des Grieux's retrospective self-justifications.Template:Sfn According to the literary scholar Lionel Gossman, the layered rhetorical structure of the narrative expresses a more general ambiguity of meaning: the narrator tells us what des Grieux told him that Manon told him she thought, and no one is able to achieve certainty about the final "moral" of Manon's life.Template:Sfn

The novel does not use quotation marks, even when des Grieux relates what other characters have said.Template:Sfn This blurs the boundaries between characters' speech and free indirect speech.Template:Sfn Des Grieux's telling frequently interrupts the narrative with apostrophes to absent figures and expressions of intense emotion.Template:Sfn When he describes Manon, he often stutters or struggles to find words.Template:Sfn Prévost was praised for this informal and expressive style, which invited sympathetic emotion: according to the literary historian Sylviane Albertan-Coppola, "[t]he words flow as the heart overflows; the flow of feelings goes hand in hand with the flow of writing".Template:Efn-num Template:Sfn

Major themes

Tragic love

The story is particularly remembered for its tragic lovers, with des Grieux and Manon being compared to Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Iseult.Template:Sfn The scholar Jean Sgard argues that all of Prévost's writing, including Manon Lescaut, is ultimately about "the impossibility of happiness, the pervasiveness of evil and the misfortune attaching to the passions", all of which lead to "mourning without end".Template:Sfn It is an early example of the emerging sentimental novel, in which love can justify anything, and important moral value is placed on strong emotion.Template:Sfn

Scandalizing immorality

On the novel's first publication, the characters and their choices were seen as shockingly immoral.Template:Sfn Des Grieux's rejection of the priesthood in favour of a sexual relationship without marriage, and his crimes of fraud and murder, challenged readers' expectations of acceptable actions for the hero of a novel.Template:Sfn Manon's willingness to have sex for money, and her general taste for pleasure and luxury, also seemed irreconcilable with her narrative role as a sympathetic love object.Template:Sfn Both were sometimes seen as corrupted characters,Template:Sfn and the novel's realistic depiction of Paris's "low life" was unusual and potentially threatening.Template:Sfn The scandal was intensified by the historical setting of the novel: the story appears to be set between 1712 and 1717, so it takes place during the final years of Louis XIV's conservative and orderly reign and the start of the regency of King Louis XV, rather than fully during the 8 year long Regency, when stories of corruption would be less surprising.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Although the preface claims to disavow the characters' misbehavior, this is often seen as an insincere pretense.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The revised 1753 edition added an allegorical vignette on the first page which also attempted to frame the novel as a moral story.Template:Sfn It depicts a Christian version of Hercules at the crossroads, a stock allegory for the choice between vice and virtue.Template:Sfn The caption, "what torments you endure in Charybdis, young man worthy of a nobler love", aligns Manon with vice; the deadly mythological whirlpool Charybdis was a common metaphor for prostitutes who would "ruin" noble young men. The image thus suggests that the novel will be a story of temptation and suffering, but one in which piety will prevail.Template:Sfn However, the effect of the novel on readers often fails to follow this moral rejection of Manon's temptations; according to the literary scholar Lionel Grossman, "[r]eaders have always wondered whether [the story] illustrates the glory of passion or its misery ... whether the model is des Griuex in love or des Grieux apparently grown wise and repentant," especially since des Grieux himself is often inconsistent.Template:Sfn The literary historian Rori Bloom declares, "he promises moral instruction and delivers amorality."Template:Sfn

Social rank and money

The novel is unusual in the French tradition for its detailed depiction of lower-class locations and activities, especially the criminal world.Template:Sfn Manon is considered France's first fictional heroine to be a commoner,Template:Sfn and the gulf in social rank between her and the noble des Grieux is an obstacle to their love.Template:Sfn Des Grieux and Manon sometimes struggle to understand each other due to their different backgrounds.Template:Sfn For example, Manon does not understand why des Grieux is surprised and upset after she acquires money from other lovers; she sees these as practical affairs, which do not threaten her love for des Grieux.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Their difference in rank is also apparent in the different punishments they receive for their transgressions.Template:Sfn When both lovers are imprisoned for some of their crimes, des Grieux's aristocratic status shields him from the worst consequences while Manon ends up deported.Template:Sfn Des Grieux often finds that even complete strangers will help him, if they share his aristocratic background.Template:Sfn The novel thus highlights how justice is enforced unequally for different ranks of society.Template:Sfn

A distinct and even greater challenge is their lack of money.Template:Sfn Manon Lescaut is often highlighted as the first French novel to treat money as a major theme.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Exact numbers are provided throughout the novel, an unusual choice that contributes to the novel's realism.Template:Sfn Manon begins the novel with a dowry of 300 Template:Lang, which is less than a tenth of an ordinary dowry for a woman entering a convent.Template:Sfn Des Grieux has only the 150 Template:Lang in his pocket,Template:Sfn and no way to earn more.Template:Sfn Template:Efn-num As an aristocrat, he is barred from ordinary employment; he could earn a professional income in the church, the military, or the law, but only if he still had his father's support.Template:Sfn The literary scholar Haydn Mason describes the novel's setting as "a harsh and sordid world, motivated almost universally by money".Template:Sfn Although the book depicts its protagonists as suffering due to their poverty, it is not a populist novel that advocates for social reform.Template:Sfn Instead, the novel responds to their struggles with sadness and resignation.Template:Sfn

Reception

Manon Lescaut gained popularity gradually.Template:Sfn When first published in 1731 as part of Memoirs and Adventures, des Grieux and Manon's story in Volume seven was not considered a separate work from the rest of the novel.Template:Sfn Over the next few years, it was increasingly seen as a highlight of that novel.Template:Sfn Reviewers praised the novel as a whole, especially for its success inducing tears.Template:Sfn Memoirs and Adventures sold well in Holland and England on its first release, and a 1732 German translation was also successful, but it was largely ignored in France until 1733.Template:Sfn

In July 1733, the release of standalone edition of Manon Lescaut prompted a review in the clandestine Template:Lang, which brought it to the attention of many new readers, including the famous author Voltaire.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn On October 5, the French censors (who needed to approve all new publications) seized the copies currently for sale due to the book's morally questionable content.Template:Sfn Template:Efn-num This effective ban led to a sudden increase in popularity.Template:Sfn As part of this new popularity, Manon Lescaut was printed separately from Memoirs and Adventures several more times,Template:Sfn including in unauthorized reprints.Template:Sfn In 1753, Prévost responded with a high-quality revised edition of Manon Lescaut as a self-contained novel.Template:Sfn Both Memoirs and Adventures and the standalone Manon Lescaut were reprinted frequently, with twenty editions of the first and eight of the latter appearing between 1731 and Prévost's death in 1763.Template:Sfn

Interest in the novel waned at the start of the nineteenth century, followed by another dramatic increase in popularity in 1830,Template:Sfn when it was adapted as a ballet.Template:Sfn Many further adaptations followed, with new reprints of Manon Lescaut each year.Template:Sfn In the late nineteenth century, editions were released with prefaces written by the famous French authors Alexandre Dumas fils in 1875 and Anatole France in 1878.Template:Sfn Adaptations, especially into opera, had a major influence on the novel's legacy; according to the literary historian Alan J. Singerman, by the twentieth century the operatic version was more widely known than the novel.Template:Sfn Template:NoteTag Over time, the novel came to be regarded as a historical classic.Template:Sfn In 1991 it was the most reprinted novel in French literature, with over 250 editions over the preceding 260 years.Template:Sfn

Responses to the character of Manon

Since the novel's first publication, substantial critical analysis has focused on the interpretation of Manon's character.Template:Sfn Because Manon's words and actions are always related through the filter of des Grieux's retrospective storytelling, readers can only speculate about her real thoughts, feelings, and intentions.Template:Sfn In the words of the literary scholar Lionel Gossman, "Manon is constantly reborn and reinvented in the minds of generations of readers, none of whom can claim to possess her finally or determine who she really is."Template:Sfn

The earliest reviews in 1733 saw Manon as sympathetic but unexpectedly so, an unworthy "whore" (Template:Langx) who was nonetheless appealing due to the sincerity of her love for des Grieux.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She was both blamed and forgiven for des Grieux's corruption.Template:Sfn The illustrations in the 1753 edition reinforced the image of Manon as someone to be loved, pitied, and forgiven for her mistakes.Template:Sfn Eighteenth-century readers also saw Manon and des Grieux as helpless, fated to a tragic ending.Template:Sfn The crimes of both were equally justified by their love and their financial need.Template:Sfn

Manon's reputation began to change in the nineteenth century, as she became a near-mythological figure.Template:Sfn Rather than being a simple, lighthearted girl of common birth, she was depicted as either a Template:Lang who destroys des Grieux, or as a hooker with a heart of gold who is redeemed through her death.Template:Sfn In 1832, Alfred de Musset's poem Namouna described Manon as "an astonishing sphinx, a true siren, a thrice feminine heart".Template:Sfn Adaptations like the popular opera Manon (1884) characterized Manon as powerfully seductive.Template:Sfn Alexandre Dumas fils, whose novel The Lady of the Camellias (1848) was heavily inspired by Manon Lescaut, wrote of Manon: "you are sensuality, you are instinct, you are pleasure, the eternal temptation of man".Template:Sfn The literary historian Naomi Segal summarizes this period as one in which most critics "tend to view Manon as if she were a real woman and to heap upon her all the myths which operate within sexual politics in the non-fictional world".Template:Sfn

Twentieth-century scholarly interpretations tend to see Manon as the victim, not of her own weakness, but of various social systems.Template:Sfn For these readers, des Grieux's version of events is considered suspect,Template:Sfn and it is important to imagine how Manon might have narrated her story differently.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Feminist theorists like Nancy K. Miller and Segal see Manon as a narrative victim of patriarchy.Template:Sfn Cultural-historical theorists see the novel as a conflict between aristocratic and bourgeois ideologies; Manon is marginalized by her class, but makes savvy decisions to strategically ensure her survival.Template:Sfn A post-structuralist reading of the novel aligns Manon with the sign, inherently elusive in meaning.Template:Sfn Outside of academia, modern readers sometimes find Manon underdeveloped as a character.Template:Sfn Twenty-first century adaptations reinforced a sociological interpretation of Manon's character.Template:Sfn Several adaptations translate the story to more recent time periods in French history, in which Manon is always a non-conformist who boldly pursues love despite disadvantaged circumstances.Template:Sfn

Legacy

Adaptations

Template:Main

Stage

Although ballets and operas of Manon Lescaut became popular,Template:Sfn only three theatrical dramas had even a modest success: The Virtuous Courtesan (1772), Manon Lescaut et le chevalier Desgrieux (1820), and Manon Lescaut (1851).Template:Sfn The Virtuous Courtesan (Template:Langx) was the first adaptation of Manon Lescaut.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn A theatrical comedy which ends with Manon surviving,Template:Sfn it attempted to mix an emotional portrayal of the lovers with some humour,Template:Sfn but reviewers found it far inferior to the novel.Template:Sfn There were a small number of dramas in the eighteenth century and the Romantic period, followed by a larger number in the early twentieth century.Template:Sfn Relatively few of the early theatrical adaptations of Manon Lescaut have survived.Template:Sfn Template:Multiple image

The literary historian Jean Sgard argues that operatic adaptations came late in the legacy of the novel because the story's mixture of genres was incompatible with the eighteenth century's dominant genre of serious opera characterized by Handel and Rameau.Template:Sfn The first operatic adaptation, in 1836, was not a success.Template:Sfn An important change in operatic precedent came after Giuseppe Verdi's highly successful 1853 opera, La traviata ("The Fallen Woman").Template:Sfn La traviata is based on the play and novel The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils, which are themselves heavily inspired by Manon Lescaut.Template:Sfn After 1853, six operas based on Manon Lescaut were written.Template:Sfn These operas varied widely in how they adapted the story: it was divided into differing numbers of sections (from three to seven acts), and adaptations existed in the different operatic genres of comic opera, opera, and lyric drama.Template:Sfn The most renowned adaptations of Manon Lescaut are the operas by Daniel Auber (1856), Jules Massenet (1884), and Giacomo Puccini (1893).Template:Sfn

Film

Manon Lescaut was adapted several times after the invention of film.<ref name="Romney">Template:Cite web</ref> The first was a 1908 silent film adaptation of Puccini's opera, which used a device called a "cinemofono" to synchronize the film with a music recording.Template:Sfn Several more silent films followed, of which nearly all are lost due to the degradation of nitrate film; the only one to survive in full is a 1927 Hollywood adaptation titled When a Man Loves.Template:Sfn According to the literary historian Alan J. Singerman, several early films alter the plot to present Manon as an innocent victim who will be more sympathetic to film audiences than an "amoral and guilty" figure motivated by a "love of luxury and pleasure".Template:Sfn

Early adaptations were period films, set in the early eighteenth century;<ref name="Romney" /> later film adaptations translate the novel's story to a contemporary setting.Template:Sfn The 1949 film Manon by Henri-Georges Clouzot depicts des Grieux as a member of the French Resistance and Manon as a Nazi collaborator; he and Manon enter the black market and eventually stowaway to Palestine with a group of Jewish refugees.Template:Sfn<ref name="NationalBallet">Template:Cite web</ref> In Manon 70 by Jean Aurel, released in 1968 and set in the near-future of 1970, des Grieux is a globetrotting radio journalist who tags along with Manon's sugar baby lifestyle;Template:Sfn instead of ending with Manon's tragic death, this film concludes with both Manon and des Grieux hitchhiking.Template:Sfn

Illustrations

Several illustrated editions of Manon Lescaut have been produced, though it attracted substantially fewer illustrations than other bestsellers of the period like Voltaire's 1759 novella Candide.Template:Sfn A 1963 catalogue identified 63 editions with original or notable illustrations, produced globally.Template:Sfn New illustrated editions were produced most decades from 1780 to 1980.Template:Sfn The novel also inspired a range of standalone visual interpretations (i.e., prints and paintings), though again fewer than similar eighteenth-century bestsellers; the visual iconography of Paul et Virginie (1788), for example, more firmly entered popular culture.Template:Sfn

Translations

The 1753 version of the novel is more common in modern editions.Template:Sfn English translations of the original 1731 version of the novel include Helen Waddell's 1931 translation with a foreword by George Saintsbury.Template:Sfn For the 1753 revision there are English translations by, among others, L. W. Tancock (Penguin, 1949—which divides the 2-part novel into a number of chapters),Template:Sfn Donald M. Frame (Signet, 1961—which notes differences between the 1731 and 1753 editions),Template:Sfn Angela Scholar (Oxford, 2004—with extensive notes and commentary),Template:Sfn and Andrew Brown (Hesperus, 2004—with a foreword by Germaine Greer).Template:Sfn There is also a 1999 edition, published by Bristol Classical Press and edited by P. Byrne, which presents the text in French with notes and commentary in English.Template:Sfn

Henri Valienne (1854–1908), a physician and author of the first novel in the constructed language Esperanto, translated Manon Lescaut into that language. His translation was published in Paris in 1908,Template:Sfn and reissued by the British Esperanto Association in 1926.Template:Sfn

Literary impact

According to the literary scholar English Showalter, Prévost "set a style for the whole century" with the novel's emphasis on regretful retrospective tales narrated from confinement: "Dozens of fictional narrators preface their works by explaining that they hope the story of their own errors and misfortunes will serve as a guide to others."Template:Sfn Showalter also says that Prévost's "globetrotting characters," who "dash about the world," inspired subsequent French novelists to depict expansive global travel.Template:Sfn

Notes

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Citations

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Bibliography

External links

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Manon Lescaut Template:In lang free audiobook
Images from an illustrated 1885 French edition

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Manon Lescaut

Contents

Plot summary

Composition and publication

Style