The Princess of Clèves: Contemporary Reactions, Criticism

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 Cleves–by Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette herself, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin and Marie de Sevigne, 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, Gerard 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.