El entierro de Manon: liturgia y necrofilia

Abstract

This essay analizes the story of the burial of Manon Lescaut from two appa­rently contradictory perspectives. Accor­ding to the logic of reason and virtue, for des Grieux Manon’s burial becomes a last service to love through a farewell ritual of the beloved followed by a yearning of renunciation to life. Accor­ding to the logic of the unconscious, however, we can read des Grieux's actions in relation to Manon’s body as an attempt at carnal appropriation. Nonetheless, both approaches become complementary since, as psychoanalysis suggests, the latent meaning of a text is only accessible through its manifest meaning.