Beskrivelse
The Princess of Cleves shows the devastating effect of passion in a soul that wants to be mistress of itself. From the first meeting with the Duke of Nemours to the final flight into “rest”, passing through a confession that causes the death of her husband, Madame de Clèves lucidly attends a rout against which her reasoning remains powerless. Mme de Lafayette thus combats a large part of love literature with this weapon which is called “analysis”. Madame de Lafayette did not invent it. But until then, it only served to explain the behavior of the characters. Here, for the first time, analysis becomes a means of progression and the very substance of the narrative. This audacity explains the exceptional fortune of the novel, and its numerous posterity.
