Manon Lescaut
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Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in eighteenth-century French fiction and the tradition of love narratives
- Literature students studying desire, morality, and character construction in literature
- Readers who enjoy first-person memoir-style narration and can accept complex characters
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting a happy romantic ending or prefer morally upright characters
- Readers impatient with eighteenth-century social context and classical narrative pacing
Reading tips
- Read a plot summary and background on the period first to ease confusion from narrative shifts
- Pay attention to the narrator's subjective perspective and distinguish his justifications from the events themselves
- After reading, reflect on discussions of love and morality to form your own judgment
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Why does the character of Manon often provoke controversy?
What background is helpful before reading this novel?
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About the author
Prévost (abbé Prévost, 1697–1763), that is Antoine François Prévost, was a French writer and translator, often known in literary history as “Abbé Prévost.” Public information about the details of his life is limited; later generations chiefly remember him for the novel Manon Lescaut. Written in a restrained and economical style, this work tells a love story full of passion and destruction, with finely drawn psychological portraiture. It occupies an important place in the transition of the French novel from the classical to the modern era and has had a lasting influence on later love narratives. The library also holds travel works such as Voyages du capitaine Robert Lade en differentes parties de l’Afrique, de l’Asie, showing that his writing was not confined to fiction but also dealt with foreign lands and maritime travel. Overall, his works combine emotional narrative with travel reportage, in a plain and fluent style that focuses on presenting characters’ circumstances and inner fluctuations.
