Éclipse au féminin? Lettre citée dans les romans de Prévost

• Authors: Izabella Zatorska

Title variants

EN

LETTERS QUOTED IN PRÉVOST’S NOVELS

• Languages of publication: FR

Abstracts

EN

What is the status of letters quoted in Abbé Prévost’s novels? Do they really, as it appears at first glance, reveal a truly feminine weakness of the male or female author of the epistle who writes to avoid confrontation with the protagonist-narrator? An analysis of several letters quoted in novels written in the first stage of the writer’s creative activity — Mémoires et aventures d’un Homme de qualité qui s’est retiré du monde (1728), Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731) — shows that this form, disappearing in the later novels in favour of a summary or quotation in (seemingly) reported speech, may be associated with a specific understanding of heroism as “everyday eschatology”. The situation of the protagonist receiving a letter (from a father entering a monastery or from an unfaithful lover) is defined by the paradoxical rhetoric of the letter. Concealment of the letter content or third-person accounts concern the events in which the intrigue — be it one dealing with family matters or politics — plays a crucial role, obscuring the original heroism, even in the ambiguous case of Manon’s “sacrifice”, which terrifies Des Grieux so much.

Keywords

EN

EPISTOLOGRAPHY; NOVEL IN LETTERS; LETTER IN THE NARRARIVE; PRÉVOST; THE ORIENT; ESCHATOLOGY

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego
• Journal: Romanica Wratislaviensia
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 58
• Pages: 145-156

Contributors

author

Izabella Zatorska