Proust and the Sense of Time - by Julia Kristeva

About the Book

Kristeva presents a thoroughly original and compelling reading of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, drawing on Proust's notebooks and manuscripts.

Book Synopsis

Noted literary critic, psychoanalyst, and theorist Julia Kristeva presents a thoroughly original and compelling reading of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, just delivered at the 1992 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures at Canterbury. Kristeva's first essay, "Proust and Time Embodied," takes a broadly psychoanalytical, linguistically sensitive approach to Proust's exploration of time and the operation of memory. Next in "In Search of Madeline," she delves into Proust's concept of the little cake that flooded him with the taste of childhood regained, providing an explanation for Proust's search for the deeper levels of childhood grounded in her psychoanalytic experience. Throughout Proust and the Sense of Time, Kristeva draws on Proust's notebooks and manuscripts, pointing out significant variations in the different versions of his work. She examines his early philosophical training and the philosophical trends in Paris at the turn of the century, seeking to explain how he his concept of the primacy of memory and sensation.

Review Quotes

Kristeva investigates several important rhetorical, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and sociological dimensions of Proust's novel...Every page offers the reader a new insight. The breathtaking intensity of her observations, the luminous brilliance of her reflections...point to a subtle and erudite mind actively engaged in reading a difficult work and taking great pleasure in the discovery that the reading has involved.

About the Author

Julia Kristeva, internationally known psychoanalyst and critic, is Professor of Linguistics at the University de Paris VII. She has hosted a French television series and is the author of many critically acclaimed books published by Columbia University Press in translation, including Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature and the novel, Possessions.