This is the story of the greatest escape artist in early modern France. The exploits of the legendary Latude, also known as Jean Danry, are brought to life by Claude Quetel, and shown to be not quite as noble as the legends make out. During his thirty-five years of imprisonment for inventing a plot against Madame de Pompadour, Latude escaped from the prison at Vincennes twice, in 1750 and 1765, and from the Bastille in 1756. Drawing on archives and letters, Quetel recreates Latude's world both from our hero's point of view ...
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This is the story of the greatest escape artist in early modern France. The exploits of the legendary Latude, also known as Jean Danry, are brought to life by Claude Quetel, and shown to be not quite as noble as the legends make out. During his thirty-five years of imprisonment for inventing a plot against Madame de Pompadour, Latude escaped from the prison at Vincennes twice, in 1750 and 1765, and from the Bastille in 1756. Drawing on archives and letters, Quetel recreates Latude's world both from our hero's point of view and from the standpoint of the critical historian. Quetel describes the prisons and institutions of the Ancien Regime which contained Latude temporarily. He highlights the social and physical differences between the conditions of certain privileged prisoners in the Bastille and the squalor inflicted upon the outcasts - the elderly, abandoned children, the ill and the insane - who were heaped like rubbish into the prison at Bicetre. Latude himself emerges from this extraordinary story not as the victim of notorious royal despotism, but rather as a man entranced by his own mythology, whose egomania led ultimately to his downfall.
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Add this copy of Escape From the Bastille: Life and Legend of Latude to cart. $14.12, very good condition, Sold by Halcyon Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from LONDON, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1990 by Polity Press.
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Very good. Very clean hardcover with jacket no marks. clean text. solid binding. very light wear. ISBN matches listing FAST SHIPPING W/ CONFIRMATION. NO PRIORITY OR INTERNATIONAL ORDERS OVER 4LBs.
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