Customer Reviews

Proust and the Sense of Time

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Major contribution to Proust scholarship, these lectures, delivered in the early 1990's, are quite useful to the student, as all the bases are covered in a svelte and tight presentation. When one reads Proust, there are a lot of pages to be read and analyzed, even more when dealing with the extensive critical tradition which his seminal novel has spawned. Thus, the concinnity of Kristeva's fluid, comprehensive, yet brief, analysis, not only displays a masterful reading of the text, but a much needed self-consious awareness of the essential secondary literature in this sprawling field. Kristeva's reading is diachronic, both in its consideration of the historical development of these materials (especially strong in her discussion of Deleuze's noted contribution to the discourse), and her rather deconstructive delineation of the development of tensions and disparities in modern existence as singularly, notoriously explicated at length in the La Recherche.

This is a very dry and academic book and now, less than two weeks after finishing it, I cannot really remember much about it.