We're going to begin this course by my discussing a novel that I have a hunch,
most of you have neither read nor heard of.
It's called Manon Lescaut. It's written by the French author, the
Abbé Prévost. It's first published in 1731.
Why on earth would I choose a book to begin this course that I think is
relatively unknown? It is considered a masterpiece in the
French tradition. But fundamentally, the general public
probably doesn't know much about it. Well, I want to say that it is the
quintessential story of the couple. And that's why I see it as a kind of
perfect way to begin our discussion of literary materials that shed light on the
fiction of relationship. It is a fiction about relationship and it
is about the fiction of relationship. It is, as I said, "the story of a couple."
What an easy phrase that is, the story of the couple.
Does the couple have a story? Can there be the story of a couple?
What would it be, to put it more sharply, whose would it be?
Those of you out there listening to me or looking at me, is any of you a couple?
My hunch is that all of you are individuals, all of you have your own
personal consciousness and awareness. And so, this intense, I think quite
beautiful, enigmatic, little novel, about the couple, is going to be bursting, it
seems to me, with issues, questions, concerns about the theme we're going to
be wrestling with throughout this course. And a theme, that I hunch, most of you,
if you don't wrestle with it, you live with it in your lives.
So, this is the narrowest text of the course.
It has a kind of purity and focus that is going to look special as we continue and
broaden our readings. It is certainly about relationship as
most of us initially in a knee-jerk way, think of it, which is a relationship
that's an emotional, erotic relationship between two people.
However, it is essentially the voice of the lover, of one person, of the male
figure and I can scarcely overstate the significance of all of those issues.
The voice of one person, the voice of the lover, the voice of the male.
All of that is going to loom large as we think about this text.
And as I speak about it today, I'm going to try to take this rather closed text
and open it up as broadly as I can to try to tap into the questions and issues that
it raises. That are not narrowly literary questions.
They're not theoretical questions. They're questions that are hardwired to
the very notion, reality, and threats of human relationship.
By doing that I'm going to be trying to get across one of the basic notions of
this course, which is that literature itself, particularly narrative
literature, the novel, brings to visibility things in our own lives that
we're not equipped to see. That's a huge claim.
It'll be up to you to determine if it makes any sense or not.
So, let me backtrack now and talk more about the, the, this novel itself in
particular, as I said, it's a classic of French literature.
It's a traffic- classic in many ways that this novel is,Prévosthas written,
more things than this, many more things than this.
He didn't initially see it as his masterpiece.
He himself is a rather intriguing figure. He had a fascinating career.
He was in and out of the church. He was very conversant with French cul-,
with English culture as well. Spent time in England, was a translator
of both Richardson and Hume. He was often on the run from the law.
He was, had very much, was at odds with the, sort of, stringent requirements of
the church that he belonged to. He was something of an adventurer.
Had lots of affairs. He's thought of, in literary terms, as a
pre-romantic, which is a quest- you know, it's a term that should have a
question mark after it. I mean, he can not have known
that something we now call romanticism, which is a very powerful movement,
not just in literature but in thinking and feeling, in the nineteenth century was
to come. He couldn't know that.
This book is published in 1731. Hence many of the things that may look
self-evident and even normative in this book, which is a kind of apology for human
love, and for passion, and I mean an apology in
the strict sense, arguing for, that all of this is something that is much more
counter-cultural, much more problematic in this novel and at that time.
So, one text that is familiar to all of you, that could be thought of as a kind of
benchmark text, would be Shakespeare's famous play Romeo and Juliet,
which we think of as one of our great stories of young lovers.
And in saying that, I want to make a particular set of issue- of points here.
One is that Shakespeare's play is famously thought of as star-crossed
lovers. And it- their- their problems have to do
with a family feud. On the other hand, what we have in this
little novel is a story of class-crossed lovers.
Something that Shakespeare doesn't touch. Class-crossed lovers.
That a young aristocrat or a young man of noble background, at least, high bourgeois
background, falls in love with a young beautiful girl who really comes from the
common people. And, that has a set of fireworks and
issues and problems altogether of its own.
But here's the second less obvious, contrast with Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's text is play, which means that in Shakespeare's text we get the
viewpoint of Romeo, of Juliet, and of all the other characters in that play.
Theater gives us a kind of vision of life in the round.
Each figure has his or her own language, own viewpoint.
We take that for granted. That is not the case in fiction.
And it's certainly not the case in this little fiction.
So, I want now to go from that to make a kind of grand claim which I'm going to
unpack not just in this lecture, but in probably a number of my lectures.
There would, be a kind of formula for what I think is happening in this novel, which
is, it's the story of, and here's my claim, the problematic hero in a degraded
world. This, by the way, this, this claim, has
all of the sort of, sort of stacked deck reality of hindsight.
Again,Prévostcould scarcely have had that in mind as his goal.
But that is how we, centuries later perhaps, read this book.
Problematic hero. That is to say, a hero who is full of
problems, not necessarily for himself. We'll see that this hero, this
protagonist, des Grieux, is enormously pleased with himself.
And yet, most readers, either choke on him or have trouble with him.
And his own family member, his own father dies.
So, this is a character where the reader has a different stance on this figure
than the figure himself has. These are some of the things that
literature brings to the table. Is that we can read a character and sense
that our assessment and judgment of this character is quite different from his or
her own. Now, in a degraded world.
Well againPrévostcould scarcely have taken that as his target.
I'm going to show that Paris in 1715 -- because, in fact, he's aiming at a time
before the date of the, of, of writing this book -- is as a degraded world.
Yes and no. Probably, every moment of history offers
us a picture of society that shows some degradation, some corruption, some fault
lines. I don't know thatPrévosthad that kind
of critical objective at all. I don't think that that was his target
and yet that is what we see. We see that this is a world that is some,
50 years almost, before the French Revolution.
And yet it's a depiction of a set of class structures, of a particular ancien
regime, old regime world that is slated for some convulsive moments that we, that
we call the French revolution. Preé cannot have possibly have
intuited any of that as well. So, we read this book in a sense, with a
critical eye about the makeup and self-assumptions of the protagonist, the
problematic hero, but also, of the culture of the setting and the stage on
which this protagonist or this couple carries out their affairs, the degraded
world. And then we ask the really vexing
question, what would be the connection between the problematic hero and the
degraded world? That's what makes for all of the bubbling,
bristling interest of literature that it begins to speak of all of these matters.
So, it's the story of the couple. As I said, this young man who was well
born, falls madly, faithfully in love with this young girl Manon Lescaut.
And the plot of this novel could not be simpler.
It is their plot, which is to keep their relationship intact, which is to be able
to stay together. It's the fundamental requirement of a
couple. At least it used to be.
That they will stay together against all odds.
And there are many odds that they have to work against.
Because, as this plot shows us over and over, they are constantly being separated
By what? Sometimes by the forces of the family,
his family. Sometimes by the forces of authority, of
the culture at large. The French would call this coup de
théâtre, theatrical moments in which they are separated.
And so the plot is about them getting back together.
We who read this text realize that money plays a central role in whether or not
this couple can maintain their alliance. We will want to examine that as we go.
And I'd close by saying that this text, is a text that- that really had very mixed
responses when it was published. That the great philosopher of the
enlightenment, Montesquieu, who is one of the first great philosophers of history,
said that this was the arrival in French literature of what he called un fripon et une catin
and that means "a scoundrel and a strumpet." And he wasn't very happy about that, that
this text he thought brought the, sort of, dregs of society, and also sort of rather
embarrassing behavior into narrative literature.
The novel itself, you should understand, is a much vexed genre in the eighteenth
century, it has none of the seriousness and prestige that today we ascribe to it.
And so, the genre itself was a little bit dicey, and these characters and this plot
didn't seem to have much dignity. So, all of that says something about the
way this story was read then. It was popular.
It has become the story of a kind of, immortal love affair.
It has become a, kind of, story of tragic love.
Puccini made a famous opera about it later.
And yet, we will want to examine all of the issues and questions in it, about the
nature of love, the nature of couple, the obstacles that are against the
couple, against relationship, both then and perhaps now,
whether they are material or whether they are also more hardwired, that is to say,
perceptual and affective also. And so, the last thing I would say here
is that even the title of this book announces its trouble.
We call it Manon Lescaut, but the title thatPrévost outfitted this text with was
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.
It is a relational title, the story of the Chevalier, the knight des Grieux and
Manon Lescaut. It is a connective title and we're going
to examine the nature of that connection.