Proust, the Body, and Literary Form

This study examines the connections between Proust's fin-de-siecle '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 other writers including Flaubert, Baudelaire, Nerval and the Goncourt brothers. Finn argues that once Proust cast off his nervous concerns he was free to poke fun at the supposed purity of the novel form.

Year

1999

Language

English

Series

Cambridge studies in French, book 59

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

6

Pages

226

ISBN

9780521641890

Data source: Wikidata