Proust and the Visual

This edited collection considers the role of the visual in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and how it contributes to the novel’s sense of modernity. The first few essays examine the philosophical implications of Proust’s quest for truth, taking up analyses of the thing, the body, and the relation between the seer and the visible. The essays in the second section concentrate on the way meaning emerges from the description of experience, as well as the cultural environment in which it is inscribed through the workings and reworkings of certain images and textures. The final essays explore how Proust’s unique approach to the visual has become in recent years the inspiration for other visual practices: film, sculpture, painting, and dance.