Research Catalog

Title

Proust, the body, and literary form / Michael R. Finn.

Author

Finn, Michael R.

Publication

Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 207 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

This study examines the connections between Proust's fin-de-siecle 'nervousness' and his apprehensions regarding literary form. Michael Finn shows that Proust's anxieties both about bodily weakness and about novel-writing were fed by a set of intriguing psychological and medical texts, and were mirrored in the nerve-based afflictions of other writers including Flaubert, Baudelaire, Nerval and the Goncourt brothers. Finn argues that once Proust cast off his nervous concerns he was free to poke fun at the supposed purity of the novel form.

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in French ; 39

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in French 39.

Subject

• Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922 > Criticism and interpretation
• Literature, Modern > French
• Hysteria in literature
• Neuroses in literature
• Human Body > in literature

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Proust between neurasthenia and hysteria. Nervous precursors. The novel of the neurasthenic. Writing and volition. Involition's way. Neurasthenia: diagnosis and response -- 2. An anxiety of language. Speaking the Other. The language hysteria of Sainte-Beuve. Voicing Bergotte -- 3. Transitive writing. Correspondence. Journalism. Literary criticism. The pastiche: 'notre voix interieure' -- 4. Form: from anxiety to play. Closure. Openness and incompletion. Structure as iteration. Marcel's voice: the recurring author.

ISBN

0521641896

LCCN

^^^98035829^

OCLC

• 39456040
• SCSB-12700305

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library