Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative after Proust - by Leonid Bilmes (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book explores the relationship between ekphrasis and memory in the novel after Marcel Proust. Drawing on áA la recherche du temps perdu as a model, Leonid Bilmes considers how Vladimir Nabokov, W.G. Sebald, Lydia Davis, Ali Smith and Ben Lerner have employed and reshaped Proust's way of depicting the recollected past. In each of these writers' works, memory images are variously transformed into alluring intermedial objects that inform the narrator's story, just as they shape the reader's own memory of the text. Ekphrasis in the novel after Proust, Bilmes argues, is more than mere descriptive ornament or plot device: it is a pivotal textual site where image and text, past and present, memory and forgetting, self and other continuously contest one another. Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative after Proust surveys a wide field of critical inquiry, encompassing classic accounts of ekphrasis and memory in Horace, Henri Bergson and Paul Ricoeur, as well as more recent interventions by theorists including W.J.T. Mitchell, Jean-Luc Nancy and Liliane Louvel. The book's open dialogue between literature and theory presents a cogent argument in favour of the bond between ekphrasis and memory in the novel, one as yet underexplored"--

Book Synopsis

This book explores the relationship between ekphrasis and memory in the novel. Drawing on À la recherche du temps perdu, Leonid Bilmes considers how Vladimir Nabokov, W. G. Sebald, Ben Lerner, Ali Smith and Lydia Davis have employed and reshaped Proust's way of depicting the recollected past.

In Ada, Austerlitz, 10:04, How to Be Both and The End of the Story, memory images are variously transposed into intermedial descriptions that inform the narrator's story, just as they serve to shape the reader's own remembrance of each of these narratives. Ekphrasis in the novel after Proust, Bilmes argues, acts as a distinct site within the text where past and present, self and other, image and text, seeing and hearing, are ever on the brink of reconciliation.

The book surveys a wide field of critical inquiry, encompassing classical theorizations of ekphrasis, philosophical explorations of memory and visuality, as well as seminal studies of image-text relations by, among others, W. J. T. Mitchell, Jean-Luc Nancy and Liliane Louvel. Bilmes's compelling dialogue with theory and literature evinces the underexplored bond between ekphrasis and memory in the contemporary novel.

Review Quotes

"Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative After Proust explores the uses of ekphrasis, and develops the poetics of image/text in contemporary critical and literary work. The fair discussion of the main theories on the subject is developed in subtle close readings of works by Marcel Proust extended to contemporary novels. A highly readable book that will be a precious tool for future research." --Liliane Louvel, Emeritus professor of British literature, Poitiers University, France

"How do we remember? In images, or in words? In seeing, or in hearing? Leonid Bilmes's compelling, fluent and sophisticated book responds to these conjoined questions by tracing the influence of Proust on a range of writers - Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, W. G. Sebald, Ben Lerner, Ali Smith and Lydia Davis - all of whom think in what are here called 'prose pictures'. What results is not only a fresh and elegant reading of this group of writers, but a bold new theory of the relation, in prose fiction, between remembering, looking and listening." --Peter Boxall, Professor of English, University of Sussex, UK

"Leonid Bilmes's far-reaching study of how memory's elusive visions are captured in words takes Proust's In Search of Lost Time as its focus. It offers illuminating readings of Nabokov, Sebald, Ben Lerner, Ali Smith and Lydia Davis, resulting in an accomplished reflection on the theory and practice of mnemonic ekphrasis." --Emily Eells, Professor at the University of Paris at Nanterre, France

"This incredibly and singularly brave book is, as I lift its last word, truly "far-seeing." Compelling in its awareness, its energeiac espousal of critical engagement with narrational watching as hearing, the intermediality Bilmes practices seems to leave out no one we care about thinking with: Benjamin, Derrida, Blanchot, Barthes, Ricoeur, and on. Way on." --Mary Ann Caws, Professor Emirita of Comparative Literature, English, and French, University of New York, USA

"Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative after Proust offers a novel reading of Proustian imagery and an informative articulation of the temporal and psychical dynamism contained within acts of ekphrasis ... [It] will be useful for critics interested in the text's selected authors, invaluable for those wishing to follow Brosch's call to expand the general field of ekphrasis, and unforgettable for scholars interested in how contemporary prose works and writes with images." --C21 Literature

Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative After Proust explores the uses of ekphrasis, and develops the poetics of image/text in contemporary critical and literary work. The fair discussion of the main theories on the subject is developed in subtle close readings of works by Marcel Proust extended to contemporary novels. A highly readable book that will be a precious tool for future research.
Liliane Louvel, Emeritus professor of British literature, Poitiers University, France

How do we remember? In images, or in words? In seeing, or in hearing? Leonid Bilmes's compelling, fluent and sophisticated book responds to these conjoined questions by tracing the influence of Proust on a range of writers - Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, W. G. Sebald, Ben Lerner, Ali Smith and Lydia Davis - all of whom think in what are here called 'prose pictures'. What results is not only a fresh and elegant reading of this group of writers, but a bold new theory of the relation, in prose fiction, between remembering, looking and listening.
Peter Boxall, Professor of English, University of Sussex, UK

Leonid Bilmes's far-reaching study of how memory's elusive visions are captured in words takes Proust's In Search of Lost Time as its focus. It offers illuminating readings of Nabokov, Sebald, Ben Lerner, Ali Smith and Lydia Davis, resulting in an accomplished reflection on the theory and practice of mnemonic ekphrasis.
Emily Eells, Professor at the University of Paris at Nanterre, France

About the Author

Leonid Bilmes is an independent researcher based in Spain. His writing on contemporary literature and philosophy has appeared in Textual Practice, Philosophy Now and Los Angeles Review of Books. He has recently contributed a chapter to Fictional Worlds and Philosophical Reflection, a collection edited by Garry L. Hagberg.