Proust's English

✍ Scribed by Daniel Karlin

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 244
• Edition: Bilingual
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

English is the "second language" of A la recherche du temps perdu. Although much has been written about Proust's debt to English literature, especially Ruskin, Daniel Karlin is the first critic to focus on his knowledge of the language itself--on vocabulary, idiom, and etymology. He uncovers an "English world" in Proust's work, a world whose social comedy and artistic values reveal surprising connections to some of the novel's central preoccupations with sexuality and art. Anglomanie--the fashion for all things English--has been as powerful a presence in French culture as hostility to perfide Albion; Proust was both subject to its influence, and a brilliant critic of its excesses. French resistance to imported English words remains fierce to this day; but Proust's attitude to this most contentious aspect of Anglo-French relations was marked by his rejection of concepts of national and racial "purity," and his profound understanding of the necessary "impurity" of artistic creation.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 10
Note on Texts and Translations......Page 11
Abbreviations......Page 14
Introduction......Page 16
Anglomanie......Page 24
For what fault have you most toleration?......Page 33
‘Je ne prétends pas savoir l’anglais.’......Page 51
‘I do not speak french’......Page 60
Le livre des snobs......Page 73
Enter Swann(s)......Page 86
‘La dame en rose’......Page 90
Odette’s smarts......Page 93
Odette orchidophile, Odette orchidée......Page 98
Odette en fleurs......Page 105
Swann’s way with words......Page 110
‘C’est bien ce qu’on appelle un gentleman?’......Page 114
L’israélite du Jockey......Page 116
‘D’origine anglaise’......Page 121
3. Choses Normandes......Page 131
Balbec as found......Page 133
Le Grand-Hôtel de Balbec-Cabourg......Page 137
Le sport......Page 149
The painter of modern life......Page 163
Un englische; un English......Page 174
Du pur vocabulaire......Page 187
Qu’est-ce que l’Anglais?......Page 200
Etymology and deformation......Page 209
Un arriviste digne de louange......Page 215
Appendix: The Location of English Words and Phrases in À la recherche du temps perdu......Page 221
List of Works Cited......Page 230
P......Page 234
C......Page 235
G......Page 236
M......Page 237
S......Page 238
B......Page 239
G......Page 240
M......Page 241
P......Page 242
S......Page 243
W......Page 244