The Princess of Cleves: Contemporary Reactions, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)

The Princess of Clèves, often called the first modern French novel, was published anonymously in 1678 and was received with enthusiasm by its contemporary audience.

The text of this Norton Critical Edition is that of Thomas Sargent Perry's 1892 translation, indisputably the translation that has best served readers in English. Reprinted repeatedly over the last one hundred years, the Perry translation is a classic in its own right. After careful review, the editor has corrected minor infelicities of translation (necessary to remain true to Lafayette's text) and updated vocabulary.

To experience the innovation of Lafayette's writing, it is necessary to understand the critical resistance it met with in seventeenth-century France.

"Contemporary Reactions" includes five assessments of The Princess of Clèves―by Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette herself, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin and Marie de Sévigné, Jean-Baptiste-Henry du Trousset de Valincour, Jean-Antoine de Charnes, and Du Plaisir―following its controversial publication. John Lyons's translations for this Norton Critical Edition make these reactions available in English for the first time.

"Criticism" includes eleven modern studies of the novel, five of which appear here in English for the first time, by Jean Fabre, Michel Butor, Jean Rousset, Helen Karen Kaps, Gérard Genette, Roger Francillon, Kurt Weinberg, Peggy Kamuf, Erica Harth, Joan DeJean, and Laurence Gregario.

A Glossary of Characters and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

John D. Lyons is Commonwealth Professor of French at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1987; he was previously professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth College.  He is the author of A Theatre of Disguise, The Listening Voice, and Exemplum.  He co-edited Mimesis: From Mirror to Method, The Dialectic of Discovery, and Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture.