Marcel Proust: A Study in the Quality of Awareness

Proust's work may sometimes offer a picture of intellectual confidence. But not enough had previously been said about the crisis of hypersensitivity in many of Proust's characters. This 1983 book attempted to fill that gap, and as such should interest all students of Proust. In A la recherche, Proust deliberates on the separation between the troubled artist and the simple, sometimes primitive sensibility of others. It is a separation that many critics have viewed as inevitable. In this book, however, Dr Hughes shows that Proust is constantly exploring the divide, and finally succeeds in harmonising simplicity and complexity - in the unlikely form of music. In this way, several areas of Proust's novel are brought into prominence that would usually have been ignored - for example, his nostalgic depictions of animal life. This book provides a synthesis of these and related experiences: as such it offers a reappraisal of Proust's view of human awareness.