Proust and His World

This course is a chance to read together Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. This seven-volume novel is a stylistic tour de force, a brilliant meditation on defining elements of modernity, and an eccentric meander through art, history and the self. We will look closely at Proust's narrative edifice, and its poetic achievements. We will augment our reading of the novel with secondary selections that enable us to explore the many themes and questions raised by the work, ranging from fashion as a serious mode of modern expression to the phenomenology of memory to the decadence of French culture on the eve of the First World War. We'll look at the importance of Proust for structuralist and post-structuralist critics of the 1960s-1980s, whose paradigms continue to resonate today. We'll also consider together the interest and limits of a single-author course, and the value of absorptive, "slow" reading in our multi-tasking era. Supplementary readings might include selections from Charles Baudelaire, John Ruskin, Henri Bergson, Gérard Genette, Gilles Deleuze, Eve Sedgwick, Maurice Samuels, and Caroline Weber. Reading knowledge of French strongly recommended.