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The Greek Girl's Story (Paperback)
Abbe Prevost; Translated by Alan J Singerman; Foreword by Jean Sgard
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R878
R831
Discovery Miles 8 310
Save R47 (5%)
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With The Greek Girl's Story, Alan Singerman presents the first
reliable, stand-alone translation and critical edition of Abbe
Prevost's 1740 literary masterpiece Histoire d'une Grecque moderne.
The text of this new English translation is based on Singerman's
1990 French edition, which Jonathan Walsh called "arguably the most
valuable critical edition" of Prevost's novel to date. This new
edition also includes a complete critical apparatus comprising a
substantial introduction, notes, appendixes, and bibliography, all
significantly updated from the 1990 French edition, taking into
account recent scholarship on this work and providing some
additional reflection on the question of Orientalism. Prevost's
roman a clef is based on a true story involving the French
ambassador to the Ottoman Porte from 1699 to 1711. It is narrated
from the ambassador's viewpoint and is a model of subjective,
unreliable narration (long before Henry James). It is remarkably
modern in its presentation of an enigmatic, ambiguous character, as
the truth about the heroine can never be established with
certainty. It is the story of the tormented relationship between
the diplomat and a beautiful young Greek concubine, Theophe, whom
he frees from a pasha's harem. While her benefactor becomes
increasingly infatuated with her and bent on becoming her lover,
the Greek girl becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming a
virtuous and respected woman. Viewing the ambassador as a father
figure, she condemns his quasi-incestuous passion and firmly
rejects his repeated seduction attempts. Unable to possess the
young woman or tolerate the thought that she might grant to someone
else what she has refused him, the narrator subjects her behavior
to minute scrutiny in an effort to catch her in an indiscretion.
His investigations are fruitless, however, and Theophe, the victim
of incessant persecution, simply dies, leaving all the questions
about her behavior unanswered.
The impetus for literary creation has often been explained as an
attempt to transcend the mortality of the human condition through a
work addressed to future generations. Failing to obtain literal
immortality, or to turn their hope toward the spiritual immortality
promised by religious systems, literary creators seek a symbolic
form of perpetuity granted to the intellectual side of their person
in the memory of those not yet born while they write. In this book,
Benjamin Hoffmann illuminates the paradoxes inherent in the search
for symbolic immortality, arguing that the time has come to find a
new answer to a perennial question: Why do people write? Exploring
the fields of digital humanities and book history, Hoffmann
describes posterity as a network of interconnected memories that
constantly evolves by reserving a variable and continuously
renegotiated place for works and authors of the past. In other
words, the perpetual safeguarding of texts is delegated to a
collectivity that is nonexistent at the moment when a writer
addresses it, one whose nature is characterized by impermanence and
instability. Focusing on key works by Denis Diderot,
Etienne-Maurice Falconet, Giacomo Casanova, Francois-Rene de
Chateaubriand, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Hoffmann considers the
authors' representations of posterity, the representation of
authors by posterity, and how to register and preserve works in the
network of memories. In doing so, Hoffmann reveals the three great
paradoxes in the quest for symbolic immortality: the paradoxes of
belief, of identity, and of mediation. Theoretically sophisticated
and convincingly argued, this book contends that there is only one
truly serious literary problem: the transmission of texts to
posterity. It will appeal to specialists in literature, in
particular eighteenth-century French literature, as well as
scholars and students of philosophy and book history.
Benjamin Hoffmann’s Posthumous America examines the literary
idealization of a lost American past in the works of French writers
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For writers such as
John Hector St. John de Crèvecœur and Claude-François de
Lezay-Marnésia, America was never more potent as a driving ideal
than in its loss. Examining the paradoxical American paradise
depicted in Crèvecœur’s Lettres d’un cultivateur américain
(1784); the “uchronotopia”—the imaginary perfect society set
in America and based on what France might have become without the
Revolution—of Lezay-Marnésia’s Lettres écrites des rives de
l’Ohio (1792); and the political and nationalistic motivations
behind François-René Chateaubriand’s idealization of America in
Voyage en Amérique (1827) and Mémoires d’outre-tombe (1850),
Hoffmann shows how the authors’ liberties with the truth helped
create the idealized and nostalgic representation of America that
dominated the collective European consciousness of their times.
From a historical perspective, Posthumous America works to
determine when exactly these writers stopped transcribing what they
actually observed in America and started giving imaginary accounts
of their experiences. A vital contribution to transatlantic
studies, this detailed exploration of French perspectives on the
colonial era, the War of Independence, and the birth of the
American Republic sheds new light on the French fascination with
America. Posthumous America will be invaluable for historians,
political scientists, and specialists of literature whose
scholarship looks at America through European eyes.
Benjamin Hoffmann's Posthumous America examines the literary
idealization of a lost American past in the works of French writers
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For writers such as
John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur and Claude-Francois de
Lezay-Marnesia, America was never more potent as a driving ideal
than in its loss. Examining the paradoxical American paradise
depicted in Crevecoeur's Lettres d'un cultivateur americain (1784);
the "uchronotopia"-the imaginary perfect society set in America and
based on what France might have become without the Revolution-of
Lezay-Marnesia's Lettres ecrites des rives de l'Ohio (1792); and
the political and nationalistic motivations behind Francois-Rene
Chateaubriand's idealization of America in Voyage en Amerique
(1827) and Memoires d'outre-tombe (1850), Hoffmann shows how the
authors' liberties with the truth helped create the idealized and
nostalgic representation of America that dominated the collective
European consciousness of their times. From a historical
perspective, Posthumous America works to determine when exactly
these writers stopped transcribing what they actually observed in
America and started giving imaginary accounts of their experiences.
A vital contribution to transatlantic studies, this detailed
exploration of French perspectives on the colonial era, the War of
Independence, and the birth of the American Republic sheds new
light on the French fascination with America. Posthumous America
will be invaluable for historians, political scientists, and
specialists of literature whose scholarship looks at America
through European eyes.
The impetus for literary creation has often been explained as an
attempt to transcend the mortality of the human condition through a
work addressed to future generations. Failing to obtain literal
immortality, or to turn their hope toward the spiritual immortality
promised by religious systems, literary creators seek a symbolic
form of perpetuity granted to the intellectual side of their person
in the memory of those not yet born while they write. In this book,
Benjamin Hoffmann illuminates the paradoxes inherent in the search
for symbolic immortality, arguing that the time has come to find a
new answer to a perennial question: Why do people write? Exploring
the fields of digital humanities and book history, Hoffmann
describes posterity as a network of interconnected memories that
constantly evolves by reserving a variable and continuously
renegotiated place for works and authors of the past. In other
words, the perpetual safeguarding of texts is delegated to a
collectivity that is nonexistent at the moment when a writer
addresses it, one whose nature is characterized by impermanence and
instability. Focusing on key works by Denis Diderot,
Etienne-Maurice Falconet, Giacomo Casanova, Francois-Rene de
Chateaubriand, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Hoffmann considers the
authors' representations of posterity, the representation of
authors by posterity, and how to register and preserve works in the
network of memories. In doing so, Hoffmann reveals the three great
paradoxes in the quest for symbolic immortality: the paradoxes of
belief, of identity, and of mediation. Theoretically sophisticated
and convincingly argued, this book contends that there is only one
truly serious literary problem: the transmission of texts to
posterity. It will appeal to specialists in literature, in
particular eighteenth-century French literature, as well as
scholars and students of philosophy and book history.
Apprentissage du cinema francais is an introduction to French
cinema, in French, for American college students. This text
includes the history of the origins of French film, an explanation
of how to analyze a film, a lexicon of French cinema terms, and an
analysis of 17 major masterpieces of French filmmaking. A parallel
English version of this text is also available, so the same course
can be taught to students of French culture as well as students of
French language.
With The Greek Girl’s Story, Alan Singerman presents the first
reliable, stand-alone translation and critical edition of Abbé
Prévost’s 1740 literary masterpiece Histoire d’une Grecque
moderne. The text of this new English translation is based on
Singerman’s 1990 French edition, which Jonathan Walsh called
“arguably the most valuable critical edition” of Prévost’s
novel to date. This new edition also includes a complete critical
apparatus comprising a substantial introduction, notes, appendixes,
and bibliography, all significantly updated from the 1990 French
edition, taking into account recent scholarship on this work and
providing some additional reflection on the question of
Orientalism. Prévost’s roman à clef is based on a true
story involving the French ambassador to the Ottoman Porte from
1699 to 1711. It is narrated from the ambassador’s viewpoint and
is a model of subjective, unreliable narration (long before Henry
James). It is remarkably modern in its presentation of an
enigmatic, ambiguous character, as the truth about the heroine can
never be established with certainty. It is the story of the
tormented relationship between the diplomat and a beautiful young
Greek concubine, Théophé, whom he frees from a pasha’s harem.
While her benefactor becomes increasingly infatuated with her and
bent on becoming her lover, the Greek girl becomes obsessed with
the idea of becoming a virtuous and respected woman. Viewing the
ambassador as a father figure, she condemns his quasi-incestuous
passion and firmly rejects his repeated seduction attempts. Unable
to possess the young woman or tolerate the thought that she might
grant to someone else what she has refused him, the narrator
subjects her behavior to minute scrutiny in an effort to catch her
in an indiscretion. His investigations are fruitless, however, and
Théophé, the victim of incessant persecution, simply dies,
leaving all the questions about her behavior unanswered.
French Cinema: A Student's Book is an introduction to French
cinema, in English. This text includes the history of the origins
of French film, an explanation of how to analyze a film, a lexicon
of French cinema terms, and an analysis of 17 major masterpieces of
French filmmaking. A parallel French version of this text is also
available, so the same course can be taught to students of French
culture as well as students of French language.
First published in French in 1792, Letters Written from the Banks
of the Ohio tells the fascinating story of French aristocrat
Claude-François de Lezay-Marnésia and the utopia he attempted to
create in what is now Ohio. Looking to build a perfect society
based on what France might have become without the Revolution,
Lezay-Marnésia bought more than twenty thousand acres of land
along the banks of the Ohio River from the Scioto Company, which
promised French aristocrats a fertile, conflict-free refuge. But
hostilities between the U.S. Army and the Native American tribes
who still lived on the land prevented the marquis from taking
possession. Ruined and on the verge of madness, Lezay-Marnésia
returned to France just as the Revolution was taking a more radical
turn. He barely escaped the guillotine before dying a few years
later in poverty and desperation. This edition of the Letters,
introduced and edited by Benjamin Hoffmann and superbly translated
by Alan J. Singerman, presents the work for the first time since
the beginning of the nineteenth century—and the first time ever
in English. The volume features a rich collection of supplementary
documents, including texts by Lezay-Marnésia’s son, Albert de
Lezay-Marnésia, and the American novelist Hugh Henry Brackenridge.
This fresh perspective on the young United States as it was
represented in French literature casts new light on a captivating
and tumultuous period in the history of two nations.
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