Reading in Proust's A la recherche

Reading in Proust's A la recherche

Author: Adam Watt

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-06-18

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0191570265

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Through close textual analysis of the scenes of reading in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, Adam Watt offers an invigorating new study of the novel and previously unacknowledged paths through it. After considering key childhood 'Primal Scenes' which mark the act of reading as revelatory and potentially traumatic, the book then identifies and examines the interwoven strands of the novel's narrative of reading: showing that scenes where the narrator reads and where others provide 'lessons in reading' are intricately connected within the narrator's ever unfolding considerations of intelligence, sense experience, knowledge, and desire. These acts of reading, often bewildering the narrator with their mix of illuminations, wrong turns and over-determinations, lead us to interrogate our own understanding of the act we accomplish as we read A la recherche. This book emphasizes the complexities and contradictions with which reading (always inescapably an engagement of both mind and body) is riven, and which connect it repeatedly to the experience of involuntary memory. Reading is shown to be frequently fraught with heady instability-'délire'-of a highly revealing sort, from which narrator and readers alike have much to learn. The book's final chapter shows how the narrator's critical energies, turned contemplatively inwards in the Guermantes' library, are subsequently turned outwards for a final interpretive effort-the reading of his now aged acquaintances at the 'Bal de têtes'-in a shift that provides the narrator not only the confidence to begin his work of art, but also the humility to face, undeterred, the approach of death.


Reading Proust

Reading Proust

Author: Maria Paganini-Ambord

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9781452902074

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The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust

The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust

Author: Adam Watt

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-04-07

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1139500236

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Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913–27) changed the course of modern narrative fiction. This Introduction provides an account of Proust's life, the socio-historical and cultural contexts of his work and an assessment of his early works. At its core is a volume-by-volume study of In Search of Lost Time, which attends to its remarkable superstructure, as well as to individual images and the intricacies of Proust's finely-stitched prose. The book reaches beyond stale commonplaces of madeleines and memory, alerting readers to Proust's verbal virtuosity, his preoccupations with the fleeting and the unforeseeable, with desire, jealousy and the nature of reality. Lively, informative chapters on Proust criticism and the work's afterlives in contemporary culture provide a multitude of paths to follow. The book charges readers with the energy and confidence to move beyond anecdote and hearsay and to read Proust's novel for themselves.


The Mottled Screen

The Mottled Screen

Author: Mieke Bal

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780804728089

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In The Mottled Screen, the author challenges the view that literary texts cannot be examined by words alone, arguing that images also play a role in the interpretation process.


Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time

Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time

Author: Patrick Alexander

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2009-09-22

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0307475603

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An accessible, irreverent guide to one of the most admired—and entertaining—novels of the past century: Rememberance of Things Past. There is no other guide like this; a user-friendly and enticing entry into the marvelously enjoyable world of Proust. At seven volumes, three thousand pages, and more than four hundred characters, as well as a towering reputation as a literary classic, Proust’s novel can seem daunting. But though begun a century ago, in 1909, it is in fact as engaging and relevant to our times as ever. Patrick Alexander is passionate about Proust’s genius and appeal—he calls the work “outrageously bawdy and extremely funny”—and in his guide he makes it more accessible to the general reader through detailed plot summaries, historical and cultural background, a guide to the fifty most important characters, maps, family trees, illustrations, and a brief biography of Proust. Essential for readers and book groups currently reading Proust and who want help keeping track of the huge cast and intricate plot, this Reader’s Guide is also a wonderful introduction for students and new readers and a memory-refresher for long-time fans.


Proust's Deadline

Proust's Deadline

Author: Christine M. Cano

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0252090721

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Marcel Proust’s multivolume masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu, began to appear in 1913. Over the next fifty years, it gained a reputation as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. But the novel’s classic image as a completed work was later shattered by the discovery of unpublished drafts, and the “war of the Prousts” has kept scholars arguing over its definitive form ever since. Christine M. Cano’s Proust’s Deadline presents a concise history of the publishing and reception of À la recherche du temps perdu, and sorts out the most important issues that have arisen from the ensuing debates about the text. She ultimately shows how this quintessential “book about time” tells another story about time’s passage: the story of Proust’s mortal confrontation with the temporality of writing, publishing, and reading.