Marcel Proust In Context

This wide-ranging volume of essays provides an illuminating set of approaches to the multifaceted contexts of Proust's life and work.

This wide-ranging volume of essays provides an illuminating set of approaches to the multifaceted contexts of Proust's life and work.

"This volume sets Marcel Proust's masterwork, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913-27), in its cultural and socio-historical contexts. Essays by the leading scholars in the field attend to Proust's biography, his huge correspondence, and the genesis and protracted evolution of his masterpiece. Light is cast on Proust's relation to thinkers and artists of his time, and those of the great French and European traditions of which he is now so centrally a part. There is vivid exploration of Proust's reading; his attitudes towards contemporary social and political issues; his relation to journalism, religion, sexuality, science and travel and how these figure in the Recherche. The volume closes with a comprehensive survey of Proust's critical reception, from reviews during his lifetime to the present day, including assessments of Proust in translation and the broader assimilation of his work into twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture"--

Understanding Marcel Proust includes an overview of Marcel Proust’s development as a writer, addressing both works published and unpublished in his lifetime, and then offers an in-depth interpretation of Proust’s major novel, In Search of Lost Time, relating it to the Western literary tradition while also demonstrating its radical newness as a narrative. In his introduction Allen Thiher outlines Proust's development in the context of the political and artistic life of the Third Republic, arguing that everything Proust wrote before In Search of Lost Time was an experiment in sorting out whether he wanted to be a writer of critical theory or of fiction. Ultimately, Thiher observes, all these experiments had a role in the elaboration of the novel. Proust became both theorist and fiction writer by creating a bildungsroman narrating a writer's education. What is perhaps most original about Thiher’s interpretation, however, is his demonstration that Proust removed his aged narrator from the novel’s temporal flow to achieve a kind of fictional transcendence. Proust never situates his narrator in historical time, which allows him to demonstrate concretely what he sees as the function of art: the truth of the absolute particular removed from time’s determinations. The artist that the narrator hopes to become at the end of the novel must pursue his own individual truths—those in fact that the novel has narrated, for him and the reader, up to the novel’s conclusion. Written in a language accessible to upper-level undergraduates as well as literate general readers, Understanding Marcel Proust simultaneously addresses a scholarly public aware of the critical arguments that Proust's work has generated. Thiher's study should make Proust's In Search of Lost Time more widely accessible by explicating its structure and themes.

"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"--Provided by publisher.

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.

A charming, funny, poignant collection of twenty-three letters from Marcel Proust to his upstairs neighbour

THE ACCIDENTAL BUDDHIST is the funny, provocative story of how Dinty Moore went looking for the faith he'd lost in what might seem the most unlikely of places: the ancient Eastern tradition of Buddhism. Moore demystifies and explains the contradictions and concepts of this most mystic-seeming of religious traditions. This plain-spoken, insightful look at the dharma in America will fascinate anyone curious about the wisdom of other cultures and other religions. "Sure of foot in complex terrain, and packing a blessedly down-to-earth sense of humor, Dinty Moore is the perfect scout for the new frontiers of American Buddhism."--Rodger Kamenetz, author of THE JEW IN THE LOTUS and STALKING ELIJAH.