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Prévost's Mentors: The Master-Pupil Relationship in the Major Novels of the Abbé Prévost

:	James P. Gilroy
:	Prévost's Mentors: The Master-Pupil Relationship in the Major Novels of the Abbé Prévost
:	Digitalia
:	9780916379698
:	1
:	CHF 54.20
:

:	Kunst, Literatur
:	English

:	127
:	DRM
:	PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
:	PDF

This study focuses on Prévost's flue major fictional works, written mostly during the 1730’s, his most prolific period of novel writing. A special feature of Prévost’s treatment of the mentor-pupil theme is his sympathy and admiration for women, who reveal more sensitivity and insight than the male characters both as teachers and as students.“Gilroy's monograph is well documented and competently written. He provides many intelligent restatements of important elements of the common fund of critical thought surrounding Prévost’s novels, which may be useful to new readers.”-Alan J. Singerman, French Review.

Introduction (p. 1)

The works of the eighteenth-century novelist Abbe Prevost reveal his constant preoccupation with Archbishop Fenelon`s didactic novel Telemaque (1699). Evidence of his interest in this work and of his admiration for its author can be found in many of Prevost`s own writings. For example, in his first major novel, the Memo/res et overtures d`un homme de qualite, his hero, the Marquis de Renoncour, lists Telemaque as one of his favorite books, along with the tragedies of Racine and the Caracteres of La Bruyere. So great is his admiration for the three works that he takes them with him wherever he goes.

The influence of Fenelon can also be seen in the vignette by the artist J.-J. Pasquier which was commissioned in 1753 as the frontispiece for what would become the definitive edition of Manon Lescaut. In this picture, the symbolism of which has been so lucidly analyzed by Raymond Picard, we see the efforts of Mentor to lead Telemaque back to the path of virtue.

The teacher must, however, help his pupil resist the temptation of sensual love embodied in the nymph Eucharis. The three figures from Fenelon`s novel are presented as symbols of the roles played by Tiberge, Des Grieux, and Manon in Prevost`s story. Whether or not this illustration accurately depicts the true spirit of the work will be discussed at a later point.

Each of the Utopian episodes in Cleveland was inspired by a corresponding episode in Telemaque. The kingdom of the Nopande Indians is modeled upon the ideal community of La Betique in Fenelon, while the orderly society which Cleveland tries to create out of the Abaqui tribe is a utopia-in-the-making like the one Fenelon`s Mentor brings about through the reforms which he introduces in Idomenee`s kingdom of Salente.

The Sainte-Helene episode in Cleveland recalls Telemaque`s stay on the island of Calypso in its demonstration of the destructive power of love and other passions in a civilized community. Although Fenelon and his works are never the object of extensive study in Prevost`s journal, Le Pour et Centre (1733-1740), he is cited frequently therein as an authority or standard on matters relating to epic poetry, prose style, rhetoric, ethics, and education.

In a discussion of the epic, Fenelon is placed on the same level with Homer and Virgil and praised for having exploited the imaginative possibilities of ancient mythology in his story of Telemaque`s adventures (Le Pour et Centre, IX, 200-201). In response to a lady who has told him that she has no interest in the personal lives of writers, Prevost asserts that he would do anything to be able to make the acquaintance of his literary idols Racine and Fenelon.

"Que `Auteur d`un livre que j`aime, me parott aimable!. . . Loin de vouloir ignorer son nom, j`ai peine a moderer quelquefois Ten vie que je sens de voir sa personne, de lui parler,&, d`acquerir sa precieuse amitie.

J`aurois fait cent lieues, pour Her connoissance avec un Racine, un Fenelon,&,c." (I, 105). Prevost also mentions that Fenelon`s work is so popular in England that the prelate`s lands were spared by the invading allied armies during the War of the Spanish Succession (IX, 228-229).

	Table of Contents	6
	Introduction	12
	Chapter one: Renoncour and Rosemont	18
	Chapter two: Tiberge and Des Grieux	39
	Chapter three: Cleveland's Mentors	59
	Chapter four: The Doyen's Career as Mentor	84
	Chapter five: Mentor in Love and a Liberated Heroine	103
	Conclusion	113
	Bibliography	115
	Index	120
	A	120
	B	120
	C	120
	D	121
	E	121
	F	121
	G	121
	H	121
	I	122
	J	122
	K	122
	L	122
	M	122
	N	123
	P	123
	Q	123
	R	123
	S	124
	T	124
	V	124
	W	124