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Cambridge Introductions to Literature
The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust
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.
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First published April 7, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 22, 2022
جهت موازیخوانی با *در جستوجوی زمان از دست رفته* بسیار مفید است. خیلی به شناخت پروست و فلسفه آن کمک میکند.
March 5, 2022
معرفی کتاب شناسی در فصل آخر جهت شناخت پروست و در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته می تواند بسیار مفید باشد.
October 10, 2017
This book was very useful to me because it provides a summary of the whole work. However, I am not sure who it is written for: if you have read the book, you might well be looking for more critical analysis and if you haven't, I am not sure that the summary is detailed enough to be of any help.
November 6, 2017
Fascinating work on Proust, his style and his master work. To my mind, the first chapters of "The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust" constitute a true "introduction" to Proust and his "oeuvre". Among other information, it explains that what passes as Proust's other works ("Jean Santeuil", "Les Plaisirs et les Jours", "Contre Ste-Beuve") are reworkings of drafts and notes that Proust wrote, sometimes at great length, but never really completed; only "A la Recherche du Temps perdu" and articles published by Proust during his lifetime are completely his own. The main part of the book, however, while a brilliantly annotated précis of the seven volumes of "In Search of Lost Time", must be very difficult to follow, for a neophyte using this book as an introduction to Proust. This said, and having read Proust (which is why I grab everything I can find on Proust), I found Mr Watt's descriptions of Proust's style, metaphors and ideas, well researched and especially clear, since some of these concepts must be close-to-impossible to verbalize and properly set into words. An extensive list of books, studies, films, TV programmes, or even, societies about or, around Proust, complete the book.
September 5, 2013
The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust aims to acquaint ordinary, if academically-minded, readers with the life and work of this French author, responsible for the 20th century’s greatest longwinded prose in his six-volume novel À la rechérche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Adam A. Watt is a major Proust scholar and a compentent guide to Proust and his reception over the last 80+ years.
The book opens with an introduction where the author admirably tries to overturn the typical misconception that Proust is nothing but madeleines dunked in tea and idle reveries. In fact, Watt notes, the book is a powerful psychological study of the people around him in French high society, and it reflects the growing role of technology in this pivotal era when trains and telephones were new. There is a biography of Proust, and then a brief discussion of his three minor or unfinished books (Pleasures and Days, Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve).
Most of the book consists a synopsis of each volume of the Rechérche, Cliff Notes-style, which I feel is unnecessary (you're going to go on and read the Rechérche yourself, right?), and I would have preferred more information on the social milieu of late 19th-century and early 20th-century France. Finally, there is an overview of Proust scholarship and criticism from 1913 to the present. This is certainly up to date, as beyond newspaper reviews and academic presses, Watt also comments on Proust's presence on Twitter and YouTube.
I was disappointed to find that there was no discussion of the variant editions (beyond the shorter version of La Fugitive based on a recently found typescript that was published in 1987 as Albertine disparue). Anyone wanting to read the Recherche has a choice of multiple French editions, or multiple translations based on one of those editions, and it would have been good to get an idea of the major differences. Since the latest Pleiade edition provoked such a controversy, I'm very surprised to see it missing here.
Having read the first volume of the Rechérche several times and now keen on tackling the whole thing, I don't feel that this is such a difficult work that it requires advance preparation like a reader's guide. However, those interested in the contexts around Proust's work will learn a few things here.
The book opens with an introduction where the author admirably tries to overturn the typical misconception that Proust is nothing but madeleines dunked in tea and idle reveries. In fact, Watt notes, the book is a powerful psychological study of the people around him in French high society, and it reflects the growing role of technology in this pivotal era when trains and telephones were new. There is a biography of Proust, and then a brief discussion of his three minor or unfinished books (Pleasures and Days, Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve).
Most of the book consists a synopsis of each volume of the Rechérche, Cliff Notes-style, which I feel is unnecessary (you're going to go on and read the Rechérche yourself, right?), and I would have preferred more information on the social milieu of late 19th-century and early 20th-century France. Finally, there is an overview of Proust scholarship and criticism from 1913 to the present. This is certainly up to date, as beyond newspaper reviews and academic presses, Watt also comments on Proust's presence on Twitter and YouTube.
I was disappointed to find that there was no discussion of the variant editions (beyond the shorter version of La Fugitive based on a recently found typescript that was published in 1987 as Albertine disparue). Anyone wanting to read the Recherche has a choice of multiple French editions, or multiple translations based on one of those editions, and it would have been good to get an idea of the major differences. Since the latest Pleiade edition provoked such a controversy, I'm very surprised to see it missing here.
Having read the first volume of the Rechérche several times and now keen on tackling the whole thing, I don't feel that this is such a difficult work that it requires advance preparation like a reader's guide. However, those interested in the contexts around Proust's work will learn a few things here.
November 10, 2011
"In an age that values speed, brevity, efficacy, performance, and appearance,’ writes Gray, ‘Proust “signifies” slowness, length, labour, contemplation, resistance, transcendence.’" This book is a good, basic introduction to Proust's writing. I would recommend it as a starting point for the unitiated before moving into more complex readings.
I liked this quote: "Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book, whose central narrative thread of a man searching for his wife after her disappearance divides into a panoply of mini-narratives and searches for identity, truth and meaning, can be read as a re-writing of The Fugitive. Acknowledgement of this is made in one episode where the protagonist, Galip, describes a man for whom the ‘only tremor in his quiet life was when Marcel Proust enticed him into reading A la recherche du temps perdu’ and who, reaching the end of the book, returns to the beginning and starts over, spending the remainder of his life alone in his apartment, save for his cat, telling and retelling himself the story of the Narrator and Albertine."
I liked this quote: "Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book, whose central narrative thread of a man searching for his wife after her disappearance divides into a panoply of mini-narratives and searches for identity, truth and meaning, can be read as a re-writing of The Fugitive. Acknowledgement of this is made in one episode where the protagonist, Galip, describes a man for whom the ‘only tremor in his quiet life was when Marcel Proust enticed him into reading A la recherche du temps perdu’ and who, reaching the end of the book, returns to the beginning and starts over, spending the remainder of his life alone in his apartment, save for his cat, telling and retelling himself the story of the Narrator and Albertine."
June 17, 2012
A bit dry, but helpful in pointing the way through Proust's labyrinthian novel.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews