Proust
In the twentieth century Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu came to be regarded by many as a definitive roman fleuve. Today, however, its seven volumes are generally considered to be a single novel. In some serious sense, it escapes classification.
Proust's work was immensely influential, particularly on British novelists of the middle of the twentieth century who did not favour modernism. Some of those follow the example of Anthony Powell, a Proust disciple, but consciously adapting the technique to depict social change, rather than change in high society. This was a step beyond the realist novels of Arnold Bennett (the Clayhanger books) or John Galsworthy.
Read more about this topic: Novel Sequence
Famous quotes containing the word proust:
“Your soul ... is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Since the beginning of time, three-quarters of the mental energy and of the lies inspired by vanity have been expended for their inferiors by people who are only abased by such expenditure. And Swann, who was easygoing and unaffected with a duchess, trembled at the thought of being scorned and put on airs when he was with a housemaid.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)