PROUST & THE ARTS (CL3082)

This course deals with one of the greatest novelists, and one of the major novels, of all time: Marcel Proust, and his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. We will read in detail the first two volumes of his novel, Swann’s Way, and In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. In addition, we will read extracts from the remainder of the novel that pertain to our chief topics in the course. Proust’s views on time and memory, on love and impossibility, on expectation and disappointment, on knowledge and jealousy, on permanence and the intermittences of the human heart and personality, will all be discussed. Proust had a vast knowledge of visual art, and draws upon paintings to illustrate his aesthetic; he was also deeply knowledgeable about music which plays a key role in Swann’s Way through the composer Vinteuil. We shall consider the paintings that are important in the novel and listen to the music that influenced Proust. Study trips will form a part of this course: to Paris museums and buildings where Proust will himself have seen the art he presents; to the Musée Carnavalet where Proust’s bedroom is housed; and to more recent museums such as the Musée d’Orsay which houses much of the painting of Proust’s period (and the period about which he writes). If possible, a trip will be taken to Illiers (now renamed Illiers-Combray), which was the model for Combray where the first book of the novel is set.