13 Marcel Proust and the Novel of Lost Time

2013 ◽  
pp. 157-162
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Larisa Botnari

Although very famous, some key moments of the novel In Search of Lost Time, such as those of the madeleine or the uneven pavement, often remain enigmatic for the reader. Our article attempts to formulate a possible philosophical interpretation of the narrator's experiences during these scenes, through a confrontation of the Proustian text with the ideas found in the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) of the German philosopher F. W. J. Schelling. We thus try to highlight the essential role of the self in Marcel Proust's aesthetic thinking, by showing that the mysterious happiness felt by the narrator, and from which the project of creating a work of art is ultimately born, is similar to the experiences of pure self-consciousness evoked and analyzed by Schellingian philosophy of art.


Author(s):  
Thomas Carrier-Lafleur

Cet article propose d’analyser deux aspects majeurs, et pourtant méconnus, d’À la recherche du temps perdu : d’une part, celui d’« imaginaire médiatique », d’autre part, celui de « dynamique du regard ». Tous deux sont propres au XIXe siècle français, espace-temps d’inventions majeures pour notre modernité culturelle et artistique. Le texte proustien, un pied dans le XIEe siècle et l’autre dans le XXe, apparaît ainsi comme un catalyseur et comme un passeur. Le « temps retrouvé » de la Recherche, c’est aussi celui d’un XIXe siècle rendu sensible par le roman, médiatisé par l’œuvre. Le déploiement et la floraison de ces deux thématiques (la première questionnant la problématique de la mondanité et l’autre celle de l’imaginaire de l’œil et de la vision) seront relevés de façon générale dans la Recherche, puis on proposera deux études de cas ― sur le journal et sur la photographie ― qui viendront les illustrer.AbstractThis article proposes to analyze two major aspects of the novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time/Remembrance of things past), by Marcel Proust: on one hand, what is called “l’imaginaire médiatique”, on the other hand, “la dynamique du regard”. Both are specific to the 19th century in France, time and place of major inventions for our cultural and artistic modernity. The proustian novel, a foot in the 19th century and the other in the 20th, seems thus like a catalyst and a frontier runner. The “time regained” by In search of lost time is also that of the 19th century, precisely mediated by the novel. The deployment of these two sets of themes (the first questioning the problems of “mondanité” — social life, social network, social gossip and so on —, the second those of vision in a civilization of the eye) will be generally identified in the novel, after which two case studies (on newspapers and on photography) will be proposed to illustrate them.


Author(s):  
Christopher Prendergast

Marcel Proust was long the object of a cult in which the main point of reading his great novel In Search of Lost Time was to find, with its narrator, a redemptive epiphany in a pastry and a cup of lime-blossom tea. We now live in less confident times, in ways that place great strain on the assumptions and beliefs that made those earlier readings possible. This has led to a new manner of reading Proust, against the grain. This book argues the case differently, with the grain, on the basis that Proust himself was prey to self-doubt and found numerous, if indirect, ways of letting us know. The book traces in detail the locations and forms of a quietly nondogmatic yet insistently skeptical voice that questions the redemptive aesthetic the novel is so often taken to celebrate, bringing the reader to wonder whether that aesthetic is but another instance of the mirage or the mad belief that, in other guises, figures prominently in In Search of Lost Time. In tracing the modalities of this self-pressuring voice, the book ranges far and wide, across a multiplicity of ideas, themes, sources, and stylistic registers in Proust's literary thought and writing practice, attentive at every point to inflections of detail, in a sustained account of Proust the skeptic for the contemporary reader.


2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (73) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Tygstrup

Frederik Tygstrup: “Proust and the Literary Lacination of the Self”This essay investigates the mode of social and sensual experience developed by Marcel Proust in his novel In Search of Lost Time. The main hypothesis is that in Proust, the traditional understanding of experience as a relation between an experiencing subject and an experienced object is replaced by a more complex process of interaction and blending between the two, resulting in a concomitant fragmentation of the object and lacination of the subject. The first part of the essay is a theoretical inquiry into the notion of experience, based on a re-reading of Gilles Deleuze’s influential interpretation of Proust in Proust and Signs from 1964, with special attention to the affective nature of experience. On this basis, the second part undertakes a close reading of a few passages taken from the early part of the novel to demonstrate how experience is actually conceived in Proust and, of no less importance, how this conception is underpinned by specific and characteristic features of Proust’s prose style.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-188
Author(s):  
Samuel Bidaud

Proust and Hergé: on some similarities between À la Recherche du temps perdu and Les Aventures de Tintin. Part I. Marcel Proust and Hergé seem to have nothing in common. Their works are indeed very different: they do not belong to the same genre, nor treat the same themes or have the same public. What parallel could be established between À la Recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), which revolutionized the genre of the novel, and Les Aventures de Tintin (The Adventures of Tintin), a series of comic albums apparently intended only for children? A closer study reveals however that Proust and Hergé, beyond what one could think at first sight, share deep similarities on wh ich this article, published in two parts, will focus. First of all, À la Recherche du temps perdu as well as Les Aventures de Tintin rest on the creation of a specific world, which can be characterized by Balzac’s principle of returning characters and by the importance of the imaginary of space (Proust’s rêveries about the names of places, Hergé’s fictitious geography). Moreover, Proust and Hergé’s characters have a very singular language and linguistic features which can be identified easily (let us think of Dr. Cottard’s puns, of Odette’s anglicisms, etc. in Proust, o r of Captain Haddock’s insults or Dupond and Dupont’s slips of the tongue in Hergé). Eventually, Proust and Hergé both develop a reflection on time which gives rise to a singular temporality in their books, and more precisely a reflection on lost and regained time, with two opposite situations and therefore two opposite conceptions for each of the authors. This first part of our study focuses on the principle of returning characters adopted by Proust and Hergé, on their imaginary of space and on the language of their characters, while the second part, which will be published in the next issue of Interlitteraria, will be devoted to the problematics of time.


2021 ◽  
pp. 36-51
Author(s):  
Anna O. Kucherova ◽  

The paper focuses on Hannah Arendt’s essay “Between vice and crime”, in which Arendt explores the process of stigmatization of Jews in salons at the turn of the XXth century. For this purpose, Arendt uses the novel “In search of lost time” by Marcel Proust as a document of the era. This essay elucidates the methodological impact of the novel in re­solving the socio-political problems it describes. The author shows that the magnum opus of the famous French writer had a significant, foundational influence on H. Arendt’s thought. In particular, the article reconstructs her dialogue with M. Proust, the result of which was Arendt’s expansion of the potential of fiction. Since then, the novel has not been limited to its instrumental character. It acquires the ontological significance of story­telling. The paper shows the logic of Hannah Arendt’s disclosure of the novel’s capabili­ties through her interpretation of “In Search of Lost Time”. The author also identifies the factors that influenced this logic. The proposed perspective on fiction as the source of H. Arendt’s thought allows the author to reveal the origins of Arendt’s innovative philo­sophical ideas (storytelling, in particular) characterized by a literary component.


Author(s):  
José António Leite Cruz de Matos Pacheco ◽  

Marcel Proust is not known as a philosopher. Nevertheless, his monumental masterpiece, In Search for Lost Time, must be understood as a System - not a «philosophical System», but a System sustained and moved by a philosophy of existence: «System of existence itself»; «System of time» in its mere occurrence. Memory becomes here, in face of time, an almost sacred way of revealing sense: and sense - the sense that one can see and understand by this work of memory - somehow emerges like a perfect, platonical form, that brings happiness and is wisdom, not as if we have already seen it in a previous life of the soul, but in the process of making its own rememberance and comprehension.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Sophie Bertho

<p>  Este artigo tem por objetivo examinar as referências ao pictural na literatura e, especialmente, definir as funções da presença do quadro de pintura na narrativa. Com base na obra de Marcel Proust, <em>À la Recherche du temps perdu</em>, são analisadas as referências à pintura para se definir quatro tipos de função: psicológica, retórica, estrutural e ontológica, que são exemplificadas com excertos de Proust e comparadas a outras obras da literatura francesa. Conclui-se que as diferentes funções que a referência ao pictural exerce em um romance se distinguem por operarem no nível da recepção ou da produção, sendo que a função ontológica, a mais complexa, ultrapassa essa distinção e atinge o metadiscurso, revelando em uma outra arte, a pintura, a essência da arte primeira, a literatura.   </p><p>This essay investigates the pictorial references in literature and especially defines the role of the presence of paintings in the narrative. These pictorial references are analyzed in order to define four types of functions: psychological, rhetorical, structural and ontological, which are exemplified with Proust excerpts and compared to other works of French literature. The different functions of the pictorial references are operating in the novel at reception or production level, and by Proust the ontological function, more complex, beyond this distinction reaches metadiscourse, revealing in another art, painting, the essence of the first art, literature.  </p>


Author(s):  
I. I. Blauberg

Marcel Proust’s works contain a lot of ideas consonant with the ideas that were actively discussed by philosophers of his time. Many philosophers focused on the issues of perception, memory, will, freedom, personal identity, etc., which constituted an important part of academic curriculum. Proust familiarized himself with the issues studying philosophy at the Lyceum (he was taught by Alphonse Darlu) and at the Sorbonne. In his novel In Search of Lost Time, Proust describes an existential experience of his character viewing these issues from a particular perspective, through the prism of the main character’s lifelong search of his calling. He gradually proceeds from philosophical psychology exploring the interaction of memories and impressions in a particular perception, to philosophy proper, to metaphysics aimed at understanding the truth, at going beyond time. The article traces some moments of this transition, shows that for Proust it is not just the work of memory that is important but the emphasis on those states of consciousness where the present and the past coincide, merge, and thereby we go beyond time, to eternity. The author analyzes some images and signs that accompanied the character of the novel on the way to the realization of his calling. Particular attention is paid to the Proustian interpretation of the role of art in changing and enriching the perception of the world, as well as the importance in human life of a habit in which positive and negative aspects are highlighted. Proust himself believed that a work of art is an optical instrument through which the readers begin to discern in themselves what they would otherwise fail to see. His own novel was such an instrument.


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