Proust, class, and nation / Edward J. Hughes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hughes, Edward J. (Edward Joseph), 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922--Criticism and interpretation.

Proust, Marcel.

Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922. À la recherche du temps perdu.

Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922.

Social classes in literature.

Nationalism in literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xv, 298 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Writing in 1927, Julien Benda described France as being afflicted by the twin scourges of narrow, class-based politics and rabid nationalism. He nevertheless identified Marcel Proust (who had died in 1922) as a writer who had refused to embrace the ideological narrowness of his age. Edward J. Hughes seeks to assess how Proust and his novel A la recherche du temps perdu might be understood in relation to issues of class and nation. A la recherche was produced in momentous times. As an extended textual construction, first conceived of in 1908 and the last tranche of which appeared posthumously almost two decades later, it was assembled against a backdrop of major historical events: pre-war tensions in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair and the separation of Church and State (issues on which Proust had campaigned publicly); the First World War and the atmosphere of narrow nationalism and Germanophobia which the conflict generated; and the continuing polarization in class politics in the years after the First World War. These all find echoes in A la recherche and Hughes establishes how the exposure given to questions of class and nation needs to be understood historically He demonstrates that the frequently entrenched positions of Proust's contemporaries at times square with the language and images of social conservatism to be found in A la recherche. Yet alongside that, Hughes unearths evidence that points to Proust as a free-floating, often playful, iconoclast and radical commentator who, as Theodor Adorno observed, resisted bourgeois compartmentahzation. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 On the Nation and Its Culture 19

Proust, Halévy, and the politics of literature 19

Barrès and the claims of nation 28

On Church and State 33

2 Contexts for Class 43

'Nécessité des classes' 43

Fin de siècle dramas of class exile 48

'Oui ou non à l'Université populaire' 63

Ruskin and literacy 71

Combray and the reader-idler 75

Marcel and the military 79

3 'Tout est affaire d'époque, de classe': Taste in Un amour de Swann 85

Taste as social marker 85

New locations 99

The Swann clan 104

4 Balbec: A New Sociality 111

Balbec and modernity 111

Class rivalries 114

Interleaving 'le vulgaire': beyond the 1914 Grasset galleys 124

Aristocratic positioning 127

Other taxonomies 132

Ideology and tradition 136

'Eloge de la bourgeoisie française' 147

5 Frames, Language, Judgements 156

Social-class stills 156

Linguistic authority and social marking 175

Parallel worlds: the strata of judgement and misprision 187

'On, c'est-à-dire le monde' 198

6 Masters, Laws, and Servants 200

Prelude on finance 200

The rentier and the drama of delegation 208

The servants empowered 214

7 Hierarchies in Le Temps retrouvé 223

The servant's quarters 223

Working-class soldiers: their glorification and instrumentalization 225

'A vol d'oiseau' 231

Equalization 234

8 Claims and Complaints 239

Proust, Benda, and the role of the clerc 239

The muse of history 247

'Notre nouvelle Bolchevie' 256

Free speech 262

The hybrid text: Francoise in mourning 263.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-285) and index.

ISBN:

9780199609864

0199609861

OCLC:

709682933