T. Whitington, The Syllables of Time: Proust and the History of Reading

Compte rendu publié dans le dossier critique d'Acta fabula "Acta par Fabula" (avril 2010, Vol. 11, n°4) : "Lire nuit gravement à la santé" par Matthieu Vernet.

Teresa Whitington

The Syllables of Time: Proust and the History of Reading

Oxford : Legenda - an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, coll. "Research Monographs in French Studies", 2009, 128 p.

EAN : 978906540241

Prix : £40.00 ($75.00 US)

Présentation de l'éditeur :

This study reveals reading to be one of the main activities to occupy the inhabitants of the world of Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu. Characters do not only read books, they have access to the journals and newspapers of a rapidly expanding print industry. They receive letters and postcards from family and friends. The posters of a nascent advertising industry tempt them to spend an evening at the theatre or a holiday by the sea, and new forms of communication, such as telegraphy, enter their lives. All human activity is glossed by a series of metaphors of reading, extending the reader's domain beyond the written text. Through a series of illuminating analyses, Teresa Whitington shows how this web of references builds into a specifically Proustian account of both the outer, social context of reading and the inner, psychological world of the reader. Proust offers a contribution to the history of reading in the France of his own lifetime and suggests that reading is the very condition of the writing of his fiction.

Teresa Whitington is a librarian working in Dublin.