Proust and Signs: The Complete Text [Paperback]

Gilles Deleuze (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2004 | Series: Theory Out Of Bounds (Book 17)

In a remarkable instance of literary and philosophical interpretation, the incomparable Gilles Deleuze reads Marcel Proust's work as a narrative of an apprenticeship-more precisely, the apprenticeship of a man of letters. Considering the search to be one directed by an experience of signs, in which the protagonist learns to interpret and decode the kinds and types of symbols that surround him, Deleuze conducts us on a corollary search-one that leads to a new understanding of the signs that constitute A la recherche du temps perdu.

In Richard Howard's graceful translation, augmented with an essay that Deleuze added to a later French edition, Proust and Signs is the complete English version of this work. Admired as an imaginative and innovative study of Proust and as one of Deleuze's more accessible works, Proust and Signs stands as the writer's most sustained attempt to understand and explain the work of art.

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris, Vincennes-St. Denis. With Félix Guattari, he coauthored Anti-Oedipus (1983) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Among his other works are Cinema 1 (1986), Cinema 2 (1989), Foucault (1988), The Fold (1992), Essays Critical and Clinical (1997), and Francis Bacon (2003), all published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Richard Howard has received the American Book Award and the PEN Translation Medal. He teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In the 1972 edition of this book, which makes up the first part of this title, Deleuze examines signs emitted by persons and events in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. In one interesting chapter, "The Secondary Role of Memory," Deleuze illustrates how voluntary memory interprets inaccurately the signs to be deciphered. The jealous lover, for example, cannot accurately decipher the deceptions of his beloved. The second part of Deleuze's book is an addition to the 1972 edition. Here, Deleuze demonstrates how Proust's book, because of the multiplication of signs, becomes a literary machine, really three literary machines: of partial objects or impulses, of resources, and of forced moments. According to Deleuze, Proust or the narrator is the "universal schizophrenic" whose signs weave a spider web by sending out threads to the paranoiac Charlus and the erotomaniac Albertine, all "marionettes of his own delirium" or "profiles of his own madness." This is not easy reading, but the book will prove to be very useful to literary critics or comparativists.DBob Ivey, Univ. of Memphis
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816632588
• ISBN-13: 978-0816632589
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #697,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An original approach to Proust and a valuable intro to G.D, September 11, 2001

By 

Louis Molloy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Proust and Signs: The Complete Text (Theory Out of Bounds) (Hardcover)

Proust is usually examined in terms of the themes of time and memory. He is, indeed, one of the few writers who has genuinely interesting philosphical insights into these phenomenon. Deleuze, however, prefers to concentrate on the circulation of signs within Proust's work. The apprenticeship of Marcel as a writer is conceived of as an exploration of different kinds of sign: the signs of love, the signs of bourgious life, the signs of art. Marcel is a decoder and producer of these different signs. He passes through the signs given in experience to arrive at the (superior) signs of art.
As someone interested in both Deleuze and Proust, I found this book consistently stimulating. What i think is especially refreshing (and philosophically valuable) in Deleuze is his ability to generate concepts from the literary text he is reading - rather then imposing prefashioned categories onto the work. His book on Kafka is particularly rewarding in this respect.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gilles Way, April 17, 2007

By 

Schumann - See all my reviews

This review is from: Proust and Signs: The Complete Text (Paperback)

A short and rewarding study, more remarkable as a defense of Art than an analysis of Proust, per se. While Deleuze has many knowing admirers,I have generally found his work difficult and conceptually self-indulgent, despite having some background in post-modernist Fr. thought. This book I found very "approachable" since the Proustian theme grounds Deleuze's discourse. There were still things I didn't understand but for all that, a fascinating commentary on aspects of Proust that is, moreover, perhaps , an excellent introduction to Deleuze. Now I must go back and again try his -- you name it. Not to mention a return to Proust.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent semiotic reading of Proust, December 5, 2006

By 

Zuzu (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Proust and Signs: The Complete Text (Paperback)

I am doing a research on Proust which is very difficult but at the same time satisfactory to read. Deleuze makes an excellent reading of Proust and the meaning behind his text by referring to the certain linguistic signs. It says a lot about the reasons or the motives of the author behind the text; in other words, the truth behind the masks of words. You must read it definitely if you really like Proust or are working on his worldview. It says a lot about the age too, the Belle Epoque.