(Re)Writing a Classic: La Dame aux Camelias and Manon Lescaut
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fj n June 1847, the twenty-three year old Alexandre Dumas fils wrote La Dame aux / camelias meant to garner him fame and a place among his literary contemporaries and forefathers. The death, in February 1847, of Marie Duplessis, one of the most celebrated courtesans of the day, with whom Dumas fils had had a brief love affair two years earlier, provided the aspiring novelist with a subject guaranteed to find an interested audience. The beautiful courtesan was twenty-three when she died of consumption, and her final days were chronicled in all the major newspapers of the time (Issartel, 12-15). Following the event, Dumas repaired to an auberge in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he spent a month writing the work that was to bring him immediate and lasting literary fame. He had with him a copy of Manon Lescaut, abbe Prevost's popular 18th century novel, which had just been reissued.1 Dumas 'couched the loosely autobiographical tale of the passionate but short-lived relationship between the c
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fj n June 1847, the twenty-three year old Alexandre Dumas fils wrote La Dame aux / camelias meant to garner him fame and a place among his literary contemporaries and forefathers. The death, in February 1847, of Marie Duplessis, one of the most celebrated courtesans of the day, with whom Dumas fils had had a brief love affair two years earlier, provided the aspiring novelist with a subject guaranteed to find an interested audience. The beautiful courtesan was twenty-three when she died of consumption, and her final days were chronicled in all the major newspapers of the time (Issartel, 12-15). Following the event, Dumas repaired to an auberge in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he spent a month writing the work that was to bring him immediate and lasting literary fame. He had with him a copy of Manon Lescaut, abbe Prevost's popular 18th century novel, which had just been reissued.1 Dumas 'couched the loosely autobiographical tale of the passionate but short-lived relationship between the c
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