Swann''s Way: A Norton Critical Edition

Marcel Prousts seven-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu), has inspired many superlatives, among them the greatest novel ever written and the greatest novel of the first half of the twentieth century. Swanns Way, the first volume of the Recherche and the most widely read and taught of all the volumes, is the ideal introduction to Prousts inventive genius. This Norton Critical Edition is based on C. K. Scott Moncrieffs translation, which introduced the English-speaking world to Proust and was published during the authors lifetime. It is accompanied by Susanna Lees introduction, note on the text, and explanatory annotations.

Marcel Proust was forty-two years old when Swanns Way was published, but its foundational ideas and general shape had been evolving for decades. Contexts includes a 1912 readers report of the manuscript that exemplifies publishers complicated reactions to Prousts new form of writing. Also included are three important post-publication reviews of the novel, by Elie-Joseph Bois, Lucien Daudet, and Paul Souday, as well as André Arnyveldes 1913 interview with Proust.

The fourteen critical essays and interpretations of Swanns Way in this volume speak to the novels many facetsfrom the musical to the artistic to its representations of Judaism and homosexuality. Contributors include Gérard Genette, whose Metonymy in Proust appears here in English translation for the first time, along with Gilles Deleuze, Roger Shattuck, Claudia Brodsky, Julia Kristeva, Margaret E. Gray, and Alain de Botton, among others.

The edition also includes a Chronology of Prousts Life and Work, a Selected Chronology of French Literature from 1870 to 1929, and a Selected Bibliography.
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