The Unintended Reader
Feminism and Manon Lescaut

This 1986 study of Manon Lescaut draws on various debates in psychoanalysis, feminism and literary criticism.

Naomi Segal (Author)

9780521159289, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 December 2010

354 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.45 kg

This 1986 study of Manon Lescaut draws on various debates in the fields of psychoanalysis, feminism and literary criticism. It has two principal aims: to analyse this story of a young man's passion for a femme fatale as it is presented by the narrator; and to suggest ways in which feminist criticism can help explain how the text operates. The volume is in three parts. In Part I, Dr Segal offers a close reading of Manon Lescaut in which the narrator's relationship with language is the key issue. Part II considers four central themes which are present in the text's language and structure: money, the image of the woman, the concept of the double, and fatality. In the final part the author presents a feminist critique of Freud and Lacan, and develops thereby a fascinating version of the Oedipus Complex which is brought to bear on Manon Lescaut.

Acknowledgements
Note on references
Introduction
Part I. Prose pour Des Greieux: 1. In which we meet Des Greieux and he meets Manon
3. In which Des Grieux practises to deceive
4. In which Des Greieux parts from father and fatherland
5. Love and death in America
Part II. Themes: 6. Money
7. The woman
8. Doubles
9. Fatality
Part III. Theory: 10. Freud: Lacan
11. Manon
Notes
Bibliography
Translations of the passages in French
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]