H-France Salon, vol. 13, issue 13: "Proust at Home: A Centennial Celebration of Le Côté de Guermantes"
H-France Salon, vol. 13, issue 13, 2021 :
“Proust at Home: A Centennial Celebration of Le Côté de Guermantes”
Edited by:
Patrick Bray, University College London
& Jennifer Rushworth, University College London
Marcel Proust published Le Côté de Guermantes in two volumes in 1920 and 1921. To celebrate this twin anniversary, H-France Salon is publishing a special issue dedicated to the theme of “Proust at Home.” The third volume of Proust’s Recherche begins with the narrator’s family moving into the Hôtel de Guermantes, marking a changed sense of domesticity in the novel as characters from vastly different social spheres cohabitate in close proximity. Other major themes of this volume also resonate today, such as the Doncières episode, the first descriptions of the Affaire Dreyfus, Swann’s illness, and the grandmother’s death.
Contemporary readers of Proust have just experienced months of lockdown, confined to our homes, close to but separated from neighbours and family. At this time, we might particularly envy aspects of the protagonist’s social life, such as his attending a performance of La Berma at the Opéra, dining with Saint-Loup and friends at Doncières, watching Saint-Loup’s mistress Rachel on stage, or being invited to dinner with the Guermantes. And yet, like the narrator, we have had to come to terms with new ways of living at home, some by compulsive Zooming (the narrator’s telephone call to his grandmother), some by cooking (Françoise’s déjeuner or the society dîner), others by taking up craft projects (Mme de Villeparisis painting), and others still by rereading Proust. How do we engage with Proust at home, as opposed to at the office or in the library?
Contents :
“Proust at Home: A Centenary Celebration of Le Côté de Guermantes”
Patrick Bray (University College London) and Jennifer Rushworth (University College London
“Le Théâtre dans Le Côté de Guermantes : « Un Passage éventuel vers un monde nouveau »”
Laurence Miens
Université de Paris X-Nanterre
“Geography and Psychology: The Battlefield of Doncières”
Chiara Nifosi
University of Chicago
“Le jeu du téléphone proustien : herméneutique de l’écoute dans À la recherche du temps perdu”
Isabelle Perreault
Université du Québec à Rimouski
“Proust’s Family at Home”
Katherine Elkins
Kenyon College
“Seaside Mountain Cherries in Full Bloom”
Olivia Meehan
University of Melbourne
“My Present Illness: Fragments on Proust, Cancer, and Death”
Igor R. Reyner
Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto
“The Grandmother’s Visit to the Champs-Élysées: A Proustian Tombeau”
Ralph Sarkonak
University of British Columbia
“The Guermantes’s Elstirs and Proust as Virtual Museum”
Maury Bruhn
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Charlus at Home, or the Verbal Pursuit of Pleasure”
Adeline Soldin
Dickinson College
Video: “Song at Home: ‘Adieu’ to the duchesse de Guermantes”
Jennifer Rushworth
University College London