Document Type
Thesis
Publication Date
2014
Abstract
This thesis examines the interrelationship between suffering and art in the context of À la recherché du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. I first trace a lineage of suffering and art, conduct a literature review of relevant criticism on Proust's work and on suffering and art, and finally explicate volumes one and five of Proust's magnum opus. I interpret the scene of the goodnight-kiss to be the genesis of Marcel’s search and his path to artistry. In this scene, Marcel profanes his mother qua maternal and artistic ideal, and subsequently sublimates Mme de Guermantes and Albertine in an attempt to replace what he lost. The results of my scholarship delineate that suffering simultaneously problematizes the narrator's artistic status and necessitates a search to replace the ideal he lost: his mother. I situate my interpretation from psychoanalytical, semiotic, and post-modern perspectives.
Keywords
À la recherche du temps perdu; Albertine; Art; Criticism; Guermantes; Interpretation; Proust; Marcel; 1871-1922; Suffering; Suffering in literature
Disciplines
Comparative Literature | French and Francophone Literature
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Repository Citation
Buyachek, M. G.
(2014).
Proust, the Suffering Artist.
Available at:
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/award/16
Reflection Essay