Proust, the One, and the Many: Identity and Difference in A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
Proust, the One, and the Many: Identity and Difference in A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (Legenda) by Erika Fulop
2012 | ISBN: 1907975322 | English | 208 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
2012 | ISBN: 1907975322 | English | 208 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
One of the many aspects that make Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu such a complex and subtle work is its engagement with metaphysical questions. The disparate nature of the narrator's experiences, hypotheses, and statements has generated a number of conflicting interpretations, based on parallels with the thought of one or another philosopher from Plato to Leibniz, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, or Deleuze. Through the analysis of the narrator's two seemingly incompatible perceptions of the world, which reveal reality to be either one or infinitely multiple, Erika Fulop proposes a reading of the novel that reconciles the opposites. Rather than being undecided or self-contradictory, the narrative thematizes the insufficiency of the dualist perspective and invites the reader to take a step beyond it.