Novel
Manon Lescaut
Abbé Prévost · 1731
Opening lines
Je suis obligé de faire remonter mon lecteur au temps de ma vie où je rencontrai pour la première fois le chevalier des Grieux.
I am obliged to take my reader back to the time in my life when I first met the Chevalier des Grieux.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The narrator, a gentleman, comes across at Pacy a band of women being taken to Louisiana, and among them a young woman followed in despair by the Chevalier des Grieux. Meeting him again later, he takes down his story: at seventeen, in Amiens, Des Grieux fell in love with Manon, who was being sent to a convent, and ran away with her to Paris, where she soon left him for a richer man, while his friend Tiberge tried to bring him back to reason.
Context
The narrative appeared in 1731 in Amsterdam as volume VII of the Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité, before being published separately. Judged immoral, it was seized in France in 1733, which increased its success through reprints. In 1753 the author brought out a revised edition, in which he toned down certain expressions and added an episode. The whole narrative passes through the voice of Des Grieux, whom the man of quality reports.
Who it is for
A short narrative, often published on its own, told by the lover himself to a stranger met along the way.
Prizes and reception
Scandalous to its first readers, it inspired, in the following century, the operas of Massenet and Puccini.