Marcel Proust in the Light of William James: In Search of a Lost Source

For a century now, scholars have searched for the “source” of Marcel Proust’s startlingly innovative novel À la recherche du temps perdu. Some have pointed to Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, or Paul Sollier. Others have referenced the novels of Henry James. But no one has focused on the more significant influence of the writings of Henry’s older brother, the psychologist and Harvard professor William James. A close comparison reveals the degree to which Proust’s novel stems from James’s psychological and philosophical theories. William James was a prominent member of the scientific, medical and philosophical communities in Proust’s Paris and was close friends with two men well known to Proust. His works were translated into French and reviewed in French journals and newspapers. This book discloses how Proust likely became familiar with William James and illustrates how James’s writings were key to Proust’s ability to craft the book he had been trying to write, extending even to his use of similar language and imagery and a narrative schema that arguably mimics James’s descriptions of consciousness, perception, and memory. Proust’s hero assiduously explores the vague, uncertain, relational aspects of experience, the trials and comforts of habit, the salvational potential of memory, the “moral” aspects of personal history teeming with impression and desire—these are the truths of human psychology and behavior theorized by William James and made fictional flesh in Proust’s rendition of lived experience.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction: Seeing Proust in a New Light Chapter 1: Text in Context: Points of Contact and Circles of Acquaintance Chapter 2: The Jamesian Stream and the Proustian Art of Consciousness Chapter 3: Parallels in the Penumbra: Tracking James’s Psychology in Proust’s Novel Chapter 4: From Jean to Je: Experience in the First Person Singular Chapter 5: Patterns of Palimpsest: James’s Theories and Proust’s Prose in the Purview of Neuro-Cognitive Science Afterword Appendix Works Cited or Consulted About the Author

About the Author :
Marilyn M. Sachs holds a doctorate in French literature. She is an independent scholar living in St. Louis, Missouri.

Review :
Though whole monographs have been committed to identifying individual writers as important sources for Marcel Proust—including Henry James and Henri Bergson—none, Sachs argues, have done justice to the influence of William James. Her book rectifies this oversight by providing a thoroughly researched, exhaustively detailed account of the many correspondences between James’s writings and Proust’s novels. Sachs illuminates how Proust’s aestheticized depictions of mental life echo James’s scientific discoveries, leaving larger Jamesian concerns mostly in the shadows. Accordingly, the book will appeal primarily to scholars of Proust, and secondarily to scholars of James or early psychology. Marilyn M. Sachs's Marcel Proust in the Light of William James: In Search of a Lost Source is an original and important contribution to Proust studies. Well researched and written in a lucid and engaging style, her book offers the reader an excellent literary and philosophical study of these two major figures while underscoring the many parallels between James's pioneering work in psychology and Proust's innovations as a novelist.