The Abbé Prévost's First-person Narrators

The Abbé Prévost's First-person Narrators PDF Author: R. A. Francis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Amidst a revival of interest in the novels of the abb Pr vost, this study addresses some of the interpretive issues that are being raised concerning his work, namely what intellectual, moral and aesthetic meaning should we seek in works that were designed as entertainments, and should we persist in rating Manon Lescaut more highly than the rest of Pr vost's output? The narrative strategies and types of distortion inherent in each of Pr vost's narrators are examined. More general observations are made on the mechanics of Pr vost's narration such as the deceptive rhetorical devices of juxtaposing different accounts of the same event by two or more narrators and the use of the double registre or separation of narrator from protagonist. Other aspects of Pr vost's fictional technique are considered - for example, the extent to which he drew upon contemporary traditions in the novel. Another important theme is the relationship between Pr vost's fictional world and the real world in which topics such as other-portrayal and the handing of time reflect the degree of unreliability of the narrator's vision. Parallel episodes and interpolations are also used to illuminate subtly the work's central themes. The latter part of this study is dedicated to the moral dilemmas raised in Pr vost's work in which the world - and the author's heroes - appear to be governed by three complex and often conflicting codes of behaviour - those of religion, honour, and 'love' or 'sensibility'. In particular, the problems of women are represented as well as the failure of the heroic ideal amongst the aristocracy. In religious matters, Pr vost is revealed as a man of tolerance, ultimately concerned with human nature. The Pr vost who emerges from this study combines a high degree of technical mastery with a serious moral interest in the human heart. His demystification of the ideal of heroism and his fragmented vision of the human personality are likely to appeal to the modern reader. The powerful dramatisation of moral conflict, familiar in Manon Lescaut, is indeed to be found throughout his work.

A Study of the Narrative Techniques of the Abbe Prevost as Illustrated in Manon Lescaut and L'Histoire D'une Grecque Moderne

A Study of the Narrative Techniques of the Abbe Prevost as Illustrated in Manon Lescaut and L'Histoire D'une Grecque Moderne PDF Author: Patricia Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Narration (Rhetoric)
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description


The Narrator

The Narrator PDF Author: Sylvie Patron
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496236963
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The narrator (the answer to the question "who speaks in the text?") is a commonly used notion in teaching literature and in literary criticism, even though it is the object of an ongoing debate in narrative theory. Do all fictional narratives have a narrator, or only some of them? Can narratives thus be "narratorless"? This question divides communicational theories (based on the communication between real or fictional narrator and narratee) and noncommunicational or poetic theories (which aim to rehabilitate the function of the author as the creator of the fictional narrative). Clarifying the notion of the narrator requires a historical and epistemological approach focused on the opposition between communicational theories of narrative in general and noncommunicational or poetic theories of the fictional narrative in particular. The Narrator offers an original and critical synthesis of the problem of the narrator in the work of narratologists and other theoreticians of narrative communication from the French, Czech, German, and American traditions and in representations of the noncommunicational theories of fictional narrative. Sylvie Patron provides linguistic and pragmatic tools for interrogating the concept of the narrator based on the idea that fictional narrative has the power to signal, by specific linguistic marks, that the reader must construct a narrator; when these marks are missing, the reader is able to perceive other forms and other narrative effects, specially sought after by certain authors.

Man of Quality, Man of Letters

Man of Quality, Man of Letters PDF Author: Rori Bloom
Publisher: Associated University Presse
ISBN: 9780838757246
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Best known for the short novel Manon Lescaut, Antoine-Francois Prevost was also the author of a dictionary, several important translations, an extensive corpus of historical writing, a dozen novels, and more than twenty volumes of journalism. While much of his fiction is reminiscent of the adventure stories of baroque novelists, Prevost's nonfiction expresses an encyclopedic ambition that prefigures the intellectual enterprises of the philosophes. In her exploration of the tension between his novelistic and journalistic writing, Rori Bloom argues that Prevost's novels employ established and even archaic attitudes toward authorship, while his newspaper elaborates a new understanding of the roles of author and public. By juxtaposing Prevost's novels and newspaper, Bloom analyzes the sophisticated literary strategies through which this author constructed his complex professional identity. Rori Bloom is an Assistant Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Florida.

The Greek Girl's Story

The Greek Girl's Story PDF Author: Abbé Prévost
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271089350
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
With The Greek Girl’s Story, Alan Singerman presents the first reliable, stand-alone translation and critical edition of Abbé Prévost’s 1740 literary masterpiece Histoire d’une Grecque moderne. The text of this new English translation is based on Singerman’s 1990 French edition, which Jonathan Walsh called “arguably the most valuable critical edition” of Prévost’s novel to date. This new edition also includes a complete critical apparatus comprising a substantial introduction, notes, appendixes, and bibliography, all significantly updated from the 1990 French edition, taking into account recent scholarship on this work and providing some additional reflection on the question of Orientalism. Prévost’s roman à clef is based on a true story involving the French ambassador to the Ottoman Porte from 1699 to 1711. It is narrated from the ambassador’s viewpoint and is a model of subjective, unreliable narration (long before Henry James). It is remarkably modern in its presentation of an enigmatic, ambiguous character, as the truth about the heroine can never be established with certainty. It is the story of the tormented relationship between the diplomat and a beautiful young Greek concubine, Théophé, whom he frees from a pasha’s harem. While her benefactor becomes increasingly infatuated with her and bent on becoming her lover, the Greek girl becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming a virtuous and respected woman. Viewing the ambassador as a father figure, she condemns his quasi-incestuous passion and firmly rejects his repeated seduction attempts. Unable to possess the young woman or tolerate the thought that she might grant to someone else what she has refused him, the narrator subjects her behavior to minute scrutiny in an effort to catch her in an indiscretion. His investigations are fruitless, however, and Théophé, the victim of incessant persecution, simply dies, leaving all the questions about her behavior unanswered.

Prévost

Prévost PDF Author: Peter Tremewan
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 9780729301794
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description


The Lives of the Novel

The Lives of the Novel PDF Author: Thomas G. Pavel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691165785
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Reprint. Originally published: Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, A 2013.

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Autobiography in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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L'Abbé Prévost

L'Abbé Prévost PDF Author: Richard A. Smernoff
Publisher: Boston : Twayne Publishers
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Biografie van de Franse schrijver (1697-1763)

Discourse on the Method

Discourse on the Method PDF Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300067736
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Descartes' ideas not only changed the course of Western philosophy but also led to or transformed the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, physics and mathematics, political theory and ethics, psychoanalysis, and literature and the arts. This book reprints Descartes' major works, Discourse on Method and Meditations, and presents essays by leading scholars that explore his contributions in each of those fields and place his ideas in the context of his time and our own. There are chapters by David Weissman on metaphysics and psychoanalysis, John Post on epistemology, Lou Massa on physics and mathematics, William T. Bluhm on politics and ethics, and Thomas Pavel on literature and art. These essays are accompanied by others by David Weissman and by Stephen Toulmin that introduce the idea of intellectual lineages, discuss the period in which Descartes wrote, and reexamine the premises of his philosophy in light of contemporary philosophical, political, and social thinking.

Abbé Prévost's Histoire D'une Grecque Moderne

Abbé Prévost's Histoire D'une Grecque Moderne PDF Author: Jonathan Walsh
Publisher: Summa Publications, Inc.
ISBN: 9781883479305
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Histoire d'une Grecque moderne is a masterpiece of ambiguity. Through the narrator's own bias and hypocrisy and through his "doubles" in the story who mirror or contrast with his character, Abbe Prevost deflates the patriarchal figures of eighteenth-century European society. The Oriental heroine's quest for intellectual and physical autonomy challenges such traditional authority figures as the aristocratic hero/narrator, the European imperialist, the "philosophe," and the writer who reflect Western sexual and cultural prejudices. Like the other novels of Prevost's 1740 trilogy (and even to a greater extent than in "Manon Lescaut"), "La Greque moderne" conveys a disturbing moral pessimism and indeterminancy that, in the end, the heroine's courage and determination cannot overcome. In an age of skepticism and increasing individualism, "La Greque moderne" seems to question the existence of any trustworthy model of moral authority.