{"product_id":"understanding-marcel-proust-allen-thiher-9781611172553","title":"Understanding Marcel Proust","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eUnderstanding Marcel Proust\u003c\/i\u003e includes an overview of Marcel Proust's development as a writer, addressing both works published and unpublished in his lifetime, and then offers an in-depth interpretation of Proust's major novel, \u003ci\u003e In Search of Lost Time, \u003c\/i\u003e relating it to the Western literary tradition while also demonstrating its radical newness as a narrative.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn his introduction Allen Thiher outlines Proust's development in the context of the political and artistic life of the Third Republic, arguing that everything Proust wrote before \u003ci\u003eIn Search of Lost Time\u003c\/i\u003e was an experiment in sorting out whether he wanted to be a writer of critical theory or of fiction. Ultimately, Thiher observes, all these experiments had a role in the elaboration of the novel. Proust became both theorist and fiction writer by creating a bildungsroman narrating a writer's education.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat is perhaps most original about Thiher's interpretation, however, is his demonstration that Proust removed his aged narrator from the novel's temporal flow to achieve a kind of fictional transcendence. Proust never situates his narrator in historical time, which allows him to demonstrate concretely what he sees as the function of art: the truth of the absolute particular removed from time's determinations. The artist that the narrator hopes to become at the end of the novel must pursue his own individual truths--those in fact that the novel has narrated, for him and the reader, up to the novel's conclusion.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten in a language accessible to upper-level undergraduates as well as literate general readers, \u003ci\u003eUnderstanding Marcel Proust\u003c\/i\u003e simultaneously addresses a scholarly public aware of the critical arguments that Proust's work has generated. Thiher's study should make Proust's In Search of Lost Time more widely accessible by explicating its structure and themes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Allen Thiher\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1611172551\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781611172553\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of South Carolina Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/09\/2013\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 344\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.30lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.30h x 6.00w x 1.00d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/01\/2014","brand":"Allen Thiher","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43984598073599,"sku":"9781611172553","price":62.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_0fc19d7b-101d-490d-8a49-acf8160fa3b4.jpg?v=1683273178","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/understanding-marcel-proust-allen-thiher-9781611172553","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}