The nun

This article is about the novel by Denis Diderot. For other meanings of Die Nun, see Nun (disambiguation) .

Bust of Denis Diderot by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle , (1777)

First page of La religieuse by Denis Diderot

The nun (the original title was La religieuse in French ) is a novel by Denis Diderot , which only became known in France , the author's home country, through its publication in Germany . Only after the text was published in Friedrich Melchior Grimm's "Literarischer Korrespondenz" eight years after Diderot's death in Germany in 1792 did it appear in Paris in 1796 under the title "La religieuse".

background

Diderot was an admirer of the works of Samuel Richardson and much of the subject of the novel Clarissa or, The History of a Young Lady ( 1748 ) found its inspirational path in La Religieuse . While he was working on his novel Le Neveu de Rameau , Richardson died on July 4, 1761. In his eulogy, Éloge de Richardson (1760), he had praised him for raising the genre of the novel to a serious level.

action

Diderot tells the story of Suzanne Simonin, but dispenses with insertions and does not deviate in the sequence of actions. Denis Diderot had a sister, Angélique Diderot (1720–1749), who had joined an Ursuline order and died there at a young age in a state of mental confusion. Perhaps this event inspired his work.

The nun Suzanne Simonin tells her life story in letters. Her parents force her to live as a religious sister against her will , as the necessary financial means are lacking for a proper marriage, as she was the illegitimate child of her mother's former lover. She hates monastic life, although she initially comes into contact with an understanding superior, her love for freedom remains unbroken. Under a new, fanatical and cruel abbess, she becomes the target of reprisals and harassment by her and her fellow sisters. In three monasteries she is confronted with the power of conventions and money as well as hypocrisy and religious fanaticism.

Adaptations

The novel was made into a film several times. A major adaptation was made in 1966 as Die Nun , directed by Jacques Rivette, with Anna Karina in the role of Suzanne Simonin and Liselotte Pulver as her last matron. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966 . On October 31, 2013, the last adaptation to date was a film by Guillaume Nicloux under the German distribution title Die Nonne .

expenditure

Contemporary

• Denis Diderot: La religieuse. online edition in French. Gutenberg project
• Denis Diderot: La Religieuse. Ed. Florence Lotterie, Paris, Flammarion, 2009.

Translations

• Denis Diderot: The nun: moral novel from the 18th century. New set edited and furnished by Michael Holzinger. First printing: Paris 1796. Printing of the first anonymously published German translation: Zurich 1797. The text was based on the edition: Denis Diderot: Die Nunne. Moral novel from the 18th century. German by Wilhelm Thal (1867–1907), third edition, Stuttgart: Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, (library of the 17th and 18th centuries). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013, ISBN 1-4823-9781-1

literature

• Barbara Lise Abrams: "Le Bizarre" and "Le Décousu." In The Novels and Theoretical Works of Denis Diderot: How the Idea of ​​Marginality Originated in Eighteenth-Century France . Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-7734-4663-2
• Andrew Herrick Clark: Diderot's Part. Burlington, Ashgate Publishing. 2008 ISBN 978-0-7546-5438-4
• Gale Crouse: "Diderot's La Religieuse . Explicator 38.3, 1980 pp. 1-2.
• Jean Firges : The novel "La Religieuse", in dsb .: Denis Diderot: The philosophical and literary genius of the French Enlightenment. Biography and work interpretations. Sonnenberg, Annweiler 2013, ISBN 9783933264756 , pp. 43-56
• Manuela Mourão: The Compromise of Enlightened Rationalism in Diderot's "La Religieuse." Romance Quarterly, 48.4, 2001 pp. 223-239.
• Vivienne Mylne: Diderot, La religieuse. Grant & Cutler, London 1981 ISBN 0-7293-0106-0
• Anne C. Vila: Sensible Diagnostics in Diderot's "La Religieuse." Modern Language Notes, MLN 105.4, September 1990, Print ISSN  0026-7910 , Online ISSN  1080-6598 pp. 774-800
• Stephen Werner: The Comic Diderot: A Reading of the Fictions . Summa Publications, Birmingham, Alabama 2000 ISBN 978-1-883479-31-2

Web links

Wikisource: La Religieuse (French)  - Sources and full texts

• Text of the novel in German
• Filming from 1966 in the Internet Movie Database
• La Religiosa 1966 VOSE Jacques Rivette, January 12th 2013

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rita Goldberg: Sex & Enlightenment. Women in Richardson & Diderot. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK 1984, ISBN 0-521-12988-5 .