Product 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 succes 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1123792 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 234 pages

Review
`Russell Goulbourne's wide-ranging introduction shows clearly how the work's past significance and it present meaning are linked: Goulbourne's excellent translation maintains the reader's involvement without sacrificing accuracy.' Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Russell R. Goulbourne is lecturer in French at the University of Leeds, England.

Customer Reviews

A postulant's narrative of habit forming abuse in a cloister.
Who would have thought that this simple book with its bare title about a fully clothed nun is truly an expressive story. If not Voltaire, who could have written a more satirical episode on clerical life. Diderot is just as striking! This man of letters is stylish in his writing and a faithful epitome of French Enlightenment.

In the old days convent is an ideal haven for ecclesiastical women and a suitable refuge for old maids. Parents who can not produce sufficient dowry also send their daughters to monasteries to wed the putative bachelor. This is what happens to the heroine Suzanne Simonin. Her mother treats her harshly because she is the product of her extra marital affair. Against her will she is to become a nun so as not to have claim on the inheritance of her legitimate sisters. Once in the convent she meets the chief nun who later smothers her not with compassion but with unjust punishments. Suzanne in the true sense of the word is more pious than the Mother Superior. Each time she moves from one convent to another the atrocities she suffers intensify.

This story will make you weep particularly when such brutalities happen in consecrated place. Meanwhile this sort of vocation and establishment coexist thereby you finish the story with feeling of disgust. This will change however when you read the preface which is written at the end of the story. It explains the origin of the novel and it will surprise you how cleverly Diderot crafted it. Although he clearly lambastes forced religion at the end you only think of Suzanne and not the Mother Superior and her minions. Impious or not the sagacious author deserves respect for immaculate style of writing and the same respect goes to some women in their holy uniform.