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Manon Lescaut (Cyclopedia of Literary Places)

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Places Discussed

*Paris. Capital city and center of all activity—political, social and cultural—in eighteenth century France. The Paris of Abbé Prévost’s novel is the real Paris of the period. At the time he was writing, the novel was not accepted as a literary genre. The novels of the seventeenth century had become so fantastic that the novelists of the eighteenth century were particularly concerned with portraying contemporary times as realistically as possible to avoid criticism of their works as frivolous, absurd, and unworthy of consideration. By setting the novel...

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