Proust and the Sense of Time (Hardcover)

by Julia Kristeva (Author), Stephen Bann (Translator) "Marcel Proust (1871-1922) composed A la recherche du temps perdu between 1913 (the year of the publication od Du cote de chez Swann by Grasset)..." (more)
Key Phrases: little phrase, Madeleine de Gouvres, Against Sainte-Beuve, George Sand (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
A psychoanalyst and a major force in literary criticism since the publication in France of The Revolution in Poetic Lan guages in 1974 (Columbia Univ. Pr., 1984), Kristeva took up Proust for the University of Canterbury T.S. Eliot lectures in 1992. The result, presented here, is no unsettling "reading against the text." She would be expected to find Proust's relationship with his mother crucial to the genesis and development of the narrative. Although Kristeva brings her authority to bear on a discussion of Proust's susceptibility to the second-level French Schopenhauerians and his resistance to Bergson, she acknowledges her indebtedness to Anne Henry's work in the early 1980s. Kristeva also argues that Proust must have found reinforcement for his insights into the unconscious and the links between image, idea, and sensation in Gabriel Tarde, whose manuscripts were entrusted to Proust's teacher and tutor Alphonse Darlu. Bann has produced a fine translation of this key for the beginning Proust student.
- Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY-Binghamton
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
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. -- Richard Stamelman Williams College

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 103 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231084781
• ISBN-13: 978-0231084789
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,271,842 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars remains state of the art in proust scholarship, April 5, 2009

By	cvairag (Allan Hancock College) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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.

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3.0 out of 5 stars rather academic, February 13, 2009

By	Frodo (Florida) - See all my reviews

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