Proust, the body, and literary form / Michael R. Finn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Finn, Michael R., author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in French ; 59.

Cambridge studies in French ; 59

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Proust, Marcel.

Neuroses in literature.

Hysteria in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 207 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Proust, the Body & Literary Form

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This 1999 study examines the connections between Proust's fin-de-siècle 'nervousness' and his apprehensions regarding literary form. Michael Finn shows that Proust's anxieties both about bodily weakness and about novel-writing were fed by a set of intriguing psychological and medical texts, and were mirrored in the nerve-based afflictions of earlier writers including Flaubert, Baudelaire, Nerval and the Goncourt brothers. Finn argues that once Proust cast off his concerns about being a nervous weakling he was freed to poke fun both at the supposed purity of the novel form. Hysteria - as a figure and as a theme - becomes a key to the Proustian narrative, and a certain kind of wordless, bodily copying of gesture and event is revealed to be at the heart of a writing technique which undermines many of the conventions of fiction.

Contents:

1. Proust between neurasthenia and hysteria. Nervous precursors. The novel of the neurasthenic. Writing and volition. Involition's way. Neurasthenia: diagnosis and response

2. An anxiety of language. Speaking the Other. The language hysteria of Sainte-Beuve. Voicing Bergotte

3. Transitive writing. Correspondence. Journalism. Literary criticism. The pastiche: 'notre voix interieure'

4. Form: from anxiety to play. Closure. Openness and incompletion. Structure as iteration. Marcel's voice: the recurring author.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-11629-5

0-511-00507-5

1-280-16194-9

0-511-11732-9

0-511-14941-7

0-511-30964-3

0-511-48575-1

0-511-05163-8

OCLC:

475870308