Proust

The Search

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Jewish, Biography & Memoir, Religious, Literary
Cover of the book Proust by Benjamin Taylor, Yale University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Benjamin Taylor ISBN: 9780300165968
Publisher: Yale University Press Publication: October 27, 2015
Imprint: Yale University Press Language: English
Author: Benjamin Taylor
ISBN: 9780300165968
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication: October 27, 2015
Imprint: Yale University Press
Language: English
“Taylor’s endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different emotional upheavals, fired Proust’s imagination and, albeit sometimes completely transformed, appeared in his work. The result is a very subtle, thought-provoking book.”—Anka Muhlstein, author of Balzac’s Omelette and Monsieur Proust’s Library
 
Marcel Proust came into his own as a novelist comparatively late in life, yet only Shakespeare, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky were his equals when it came to creating characters as memorably human. As biographer Benjamin Taylor suggests, Proust was a literary lightweight before writing his multivolume masterwork In Search of Lost Time, but following a series of momentous historical and personal events, he became—against all expectations—one of the greatest writers of his, and indeed any, era.
 
This insightful, beautifully written biography examines Proust’s artistic struggles—the “search” of the subtitle—and stunning metamorphosis in the context of his times. Taylor provides an in-depth study of the author’s life while exploring how Proust’s personal correspondence and published works were greatly informed by his mother’s Judaism, his homosexuality, and such dramatic events as the Dreyfus Affair and, above all, World War I. As Taylor writes in his prologue, “Proust’s Search is the most encyclopedic of novels, encompassing the essentials of human nature. . . . His account, running from the early years of the Third Republic to the aftermath of World War I, becomes the inclusive story of all lives, a colossal mimesis. To read the entire Search is to find oneself transfigured and victorious at journey’s end, at home in time and in eternity too.”
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
“Taylor’s endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different emotional upheavals, fired Proust’s imagination and, albeit sometimes completely transformed, appeared in his work. The result is a very subtle, thought-provoking book.”—Anka Muhlstein, author of Balzac’s Omelette and Monsieur Proust’s Library
 
Marcel Proust came into his own as a novelist comparatively late in life, yet only Shakespeare, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky were his equals when it came to creating characters as memorably human. As biographer Benjamin Taylor suggests, Proust was a literary lightweight before writing his multivolume masterwork In Search of Lost Time, but following a series of momentous historical and personal events, he became—against all expectations—one of the greatest writers of his, and indeed any, era.
 
This insightful, beautifully written biography examines Proust’s artistic struggles—the “search” of the subtitle—and stunning metamorphosis in the context of his times. Taylor provides an in-depth study of the author’s life while exploring how Proust’s personal correspondence and published works were greatly informed by his mother’s Judaism, his homosexuality, and such dramatic events as the Dreyfus Affair and, above all, World War I. As Taylor writes in his prologue, “Proust’s Search is the most encyclopedic of novels, encompassing the essentials of human nature. . . . His account, running from the early years of the Third Republic to the aftermath of World War I, becomes the inclusive story of all lives, a colossal mimesis. To read the entire Search is to find oneself transfigured and victorious at journey’s end, at home in time and in eternity too.”

More books from Yale University Press

Cover of the book Unbalanced by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book The Ukrainian Night by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Divine Love by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Spanish Rome, 1500-1700 by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Jewish Life in Small-Town America by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Dispatches from Planet 3 by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Herbert Butterfield by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Faust by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Babies of Technology by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book The Captain and "the Cannibal" by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book The Craftsman by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book How the Earthquake Bird Got Its Name and Other Tales of an Unbalanced Nature by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America by Benjamin Taylor
Cover of the book Jazz in Search of Itself by Benjamin Taylor
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy