47 pages • 1 hour read
Abbe PrevostManon Lescaut
Abbe PrevostFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1731A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Foreword-Page 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Foreword Summary
In the Foreword, Monsieur de Renoncour, narrator of the Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality, explains why he has published the story of Des Grieux and Manon separately. Renoncour first argues that the story is extraneous, that “a narrative ought to be pruned of details that would otherwise make it heavy and confused” (2). He also claims that Des Grieux and Manon’s star-crossed love affair serves as “a terrible example of the power of the passions” (3) and hopes that it will help readers make better choices. Indeed, Renoncour claims, “it contains few events that cannot serve as an aid to moral instruction; and it does the public no small service […] to instruct while entertaining them” (3). Ultimately, the story is “a moral treatise, appealingly presented as a practical example” (4). Prévost ends this section in his own voice, noting that he has corrected “a great number of gross errors” and made some additions as well (4).
Pages 7-10 Summary
Renoncour explains how he first met Des Grieux. While travelling on an errand for his daughter, Renoncour stopped in Pacy, a town about 45 miles outside of Paris. The town citizens are alarmed over several sex workers who have stopped to rest with their guards; they are being transported to the port of Le Havre-de-Grace where they will be sent to America for their crimes, a real practice in late 17th-century France. Renoncour prepares to move on until he sees an older woman weeping about “a barbarous thing, a thing to make [one] weep with horror and pity” (7). Curiosity compels Renoncour to look for himself; this is where he first sees Manon Lescaut. He describes her as “one whose air and cast of feature were so little in keeping with her present condition that in any other situation I would have taken her for a person of the first rank” (8). Indeed, something about the woman “filled [him] with respect and compassion” (8).
Renoncour questions the guard about the woman, who tells him to speak to a man who has been “following [the woman] ever since [they] left Paris and has hardly stopped weeping for a moment” (8). The man is Des Grieux, who at this point tells Renoncour only how much he loves the woman and how desperately he needs money, as he plans to follow her to America. Renoncour is moved to give him some money and even bribes the guards to allow the man to speak to his beloved whenever he wants.
Two years later, Renoncour again runs into the young man, this time in Calais, newly returned from America. As payment for Renoncour’s generosity, Des Grieux agrees to tell him his story, “not only [his] misfortunes and [his] sufferings, but also [his] transgressions and [his] most shameful weaknesses” (11). He claims that he is “certain” that “while condemning [him],” the listener will also “be unable to keep from pitying [him]” (11).
Foreword-Page 10 Analysis
Prévost’s Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality purports to be the memoirs of Monsieur de Renoncour, of which the tale of Manon and Chevalier des Grieux forms only a small part. Manon Lescaut was “offered to the public in the first instance as an appendix, literally to [the] highly successful” Memoirs (vii). Indeed, in the Foreword, Renoncour claims he is publishing it separately because it is an extraneous detail unimportant to his own story; however, the real reason is that the story of Manon and Des Grieux quickly became extraordinarily popular. Furthermore, Renoncour’s insistence that the story tells a moral tale belies the reality that the story was banned in France for its depiction of Des Grieux and Manon’s scandalous behavior, and is a blatant attempt to appease its critics, who were shocked at the sympathy with which Prevost portrayed both Manon and Des Grieux. In her introduction, book translator Angela Scholar suggests that underneath Renoncour’s seemingly manufactured outrage lies a warning to the reader. Namely, Des Grieux is an unreliable narrator gifted with a silver tongue, and Renoncour feels that “it is his duty […] to warn [readers] against too complicit a sympathy with the ambiguous narrator of an ambiguous tale” (x).
In the next section, the reader encounters the first of many descriptions of Manon and her effect on others. Renoncour himself is prompted to see Manon after observing the old woman weeping for her and the “horror” of seeing her chained with the other sex workers. Manon’s appearance affects Renoncour as well. Interestingly, we get no real description of Manon herself. Is she fair, dark, tall, short? No one ever says. Instead, Manon is almost a force of nature, one that inspires many feelings, like the old woman’s “horror and pity” and Renoncour’s “respect and compassion.” Even the guard “treat[s] her with more consideration than the others” even though “no one’s told [him] to” (98).
Des Grieux inspires similar reactions, and the first example is when Renoncour is moved to help Des Grieux despite not knowing anything about him. Instead, Renoncour insists that he knew just by looking at Des Grieux that he was “a man of birth and education” (9), and that Des Grieux’s brief account of his love for Manon is “one of the most extraordinary and touching [he] had ever heard” (9). Des Grieux and Manon’s magnetic personalities and the compelling, overwhelming effect of their love on others is a pattern that repeats throughout the narrative.
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