Selfhood in the Early Finance Capitalism of Manon Lescaut Journal Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Abstract; Prévost’s memoir-novel, L’Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, engages with the challenges of deploying traditional modes of literary description (characterology and allegorization) in the nascent reign of finance capitalism. This article examines the interrelationship between abstraction and material existence in the early eighteenth-century French bestseller Manon Lescaut. By underscoring the ambivalences of class ideology via the context of financial revolution, I argue that Prévost experiments with a new moral economy of selfhood that grapples with, and perhaps ultimately loosens itself from, the strictures of ancien régime social identity.

publication date

  • February 6, 2021

has restriction

  • closed

Date in CU Experts

  • June 25, 2021 11:04 AM

Full Author List

  • Yamashita M

author count

  • 1

Other Profiles

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0015-8518

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1471-6860

Additional Document Info

start page

  • 468

end page

  • 480

volume

  • 56

issue

  • 4