Proust's Recherche

A Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Randolph Splitter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032624143
• eBook ISBN: 9781003807698
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Originally published in 1981 and now reissued with a new preface by Randolph Splitter, this volume examines Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, showing that Marcel, the central character, like the novel itself, is characterized by an unstable equilibrium of opposing forces, so that he wishes both to dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, and to maintain divisions and defenses. Instead of trying to force the text into a rigid theoretical structure this reading of Proust's novel illuminates it by confronting and re-examining the problems that Freudian theory itself addresses. In considering these problems, the author also takes into account the findings of modern French psychoanalysis and literary criticism, referring particularly to the work of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraph
• New Preface to the Reissue of 2023
• 1 Marcel in Wonderland, or the logic of magical thinking
• 2 The ‘economic’ problem in Proust and Freud
• 3 Bonds of love and kinship
• 4 Proust, Joyce, and the metaphor of flowers
• 5 Reminiscence, metaphor, and art
• 6 Proust’s myth of artistic creation
• 7 Theoretical conclusion: psychoanalysis, literary theory, and recent Proust criticism
• Notes
• Index