Claudine-Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin: Memoirs of the Count of Comminge and the Misfortunes of Love

These translations from the French bring two of Claudine-Alexandrine de Tencin's novels back to life: The Memoirs of the Count of Comminge (1735), presented as a much-needed new translation, and The Misfortunes of Love (1747), appearing here for the first time in English. Published more than half a century after Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves, they belonged less to Tencin's time than to the tradition of the "feminine historical novel" inspired by Lafayette. Beautifully written in the spare but powerful prose characteristic of French classicism and widely read both in Tencin's lifetime and beyond, the novels were forgotten in the mid-nineteenth century. Like the work of Abbé Prévost and Pierre de Marivaux, they were important contributions to the early sentimental novel. They also anticipated, surprisingly, the gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe which appeared later in the century.

About the author

Jonathan D. Walsh is professor of French Studies at Wheaton College, in Norton, Massachusetts. He is currently working on a study of Prévost's Cleveland and adapting a work by Kate Chopin for the stage.

Product details

• Authors: Claudine Alexandrine Gu Tencin
• Assisted by: Jonathan Walsh (Editor)
• Publisher: Arizona Ctr For Medieval & Ren
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2016
• No. of pages: 147
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 226 mm x 13 mm
• Weight: 227 g
• Series: Medieval & Renais Text Studies; Medieval & Renais Text Studies
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature