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Swann's Way, published in 1913, is the first part of Proust's seven-part novel A la Recherche du temps perdu. The author's expansion, revision and correction of the work were cut short by his death in 1922, and sixty-six years later editors are still producing variants of the last three volumes based on working notebooks. The novel's structure was compared by its author to that of a cathedral, and its status is that of one of the greatest literary landmarks of the twentieth century. Sheila Stern's study begins with a summary of the whole novel and goes on to give an account of the activity of reading as part of its subject-matter. Two chapters are devoted to Swann's Way itself, with close attention to the opening pages, and to such topics as memory, time, imagery and names. The book's reception in various Western literatures is discussed, and there is a guide to further reading.
This Companion, first published in 2001, aims to provide a broad account of the major features of Proust's work.
Publication of Yosef Yerushalmi's Zakhor in 1982 inspired a generation of scholarly inquiry into historical images and myths, the construction of the Jewish past, and the making and meaning of collective memory. Here, eminent scholars in their respective fields extend the lines of his seminal study into topics that range from medieval rabbinics, homiletics, kabbalah, and Hasidism to antisemitism, Zionism, and the making of modern Jewish identity. Essays are clustered around four central themes: historical consciousness and the construction of memory; the relationship between time and history in Jewish thought; the demise of traditional forms of collective memory; and the writing of Jewish history in modern times.
Examines images of horror in Victorian fiction, criticism, and philosophy. Focusing on the recurring metaphor of Medusas head, The Medusa Effect examines images of horror in texts by Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a series of Victorian artists and critics writing about aesthetics. Through nuanced and innovative readings of canonical works by Freud, Nietzsche, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, A. C. Swinburne, and George Eliot, Thomas Albrecht demonstrates the twofold nature of these writers images of horror. On the one hand, the analysis illuminates how the representation of something seen as horrifyingfor instance, a disturbing work of art, an existential insight, or a re...
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'Swann's love . . . could not have been torn out of him without destroying him almost entirely' Swann in Love is a brilliant, devastating novella that tells of infatuation, love, and jealousy. Set against the backdrop of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, the story of Charles Swann illuminates the fragilities and foibles of human beings when in the grip of desire. Swann is a highly cultured man-about-town who is plunged into turmoil when he falls for a young woman called Odette de Crécy. The novel traces the progress of Swann's emotions with penetrating exactitude as he encounters Odette at the regular gatherings in the salon of the Verdurins. His wilful self-delusion is both poignant and ridiculous , and his tormented feelings play out in scenes of high comedy amongst Odette's socially pretentious circle. Swann in Love is part of Proust's monumental masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, and it is also a captivating self-contained story. This new translation encapsulates the qualities that have secured Proust's reputation, and serves as a perfect introduction to his writing.
Set against the backdrop of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, presents a portrait of a stormy love affair between the courtesan Odette de Crécy and upper-class socialite Charles Swann that gives way to profound meditations on love and jealousy.
A study of English words and phrases in A la recherche du temps perdu, dealing with the social comedy of French 'Anglomania' and with Proust's understanding of the necessary 'impurity' of all languages and artistic creation. Karlin demonstrates that English is a significant presence in this French masterpiece.
Proust is read as a writer of maxims and metaphors, of short and long sentences, as at once an aesthete and a scientific thinker. His A la recherche du temps perdu is a hybrid, a novel-essay, an epistemological debate that crosses the boundaries between two cultures, art and science. Science and Structure explores the epistemological alertness and anxiety of Proust's masterpiece and in so doing illuminates the interrelations between "modernist" art and science.