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Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.
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The Nun, Denis Diderot
- Language
- Released
- 2005
- product-detail.submit-box.info.binding
- (Paperback)
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- Title
- The Nun
- Language
- English
- Authors
- Denis Diderot
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Released
- 2005
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 234
- ISBN10
- 0192804308
- ISBN13
- 9780192804303
- Series
- Tags
- Fiction, Religious Topics, Philosophical Topics, Science Fiction, Love, Classics, France, Fun, Literary Fiction, French Literature, Violence, Satire, Fate, 18th century, Intrigues, Enlightenment, Monasteries, Abbeys, Humorous Sci-Fi, Nuns, Hypocrisy
- First published
- 1780
- Original title
- La Religieuse
- Rating
- 3.75 out of 5
- Description
- Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.