Abstract
Bien qu'on puisse dire comme Balzac. Though we might say it as Balzac would. What does it mean to say something as Balzac would have said it? What did it mean, moreover, to Proust to write like Balzac as he embarked on the Recherche? In the case of a writer like Proust, this would seem to be a distinctly two-part question. On the one hand, we must ask what it means to write like Balzac. In other words, we must delineate the specifically Balzacian features which Proust can be said to have internalized, borrowed, or mimicked, in the development of his own prose style. On the other hand, we must also ask the very different question of what it means to write like Balzac. Since Proust began his career as a writer of pastiche, we must ask whether he writes like Balzac through a form of archly deliberate pastiche or a less controlled, less "intentional" influence, or, somewhere between the two, through what one critic has called the "phenomenon of intellectual and affective osmosis" which manifests itself in his writing.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 989-1008 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | Modern Language Notes |
Volume | 121 |
Issue number | 4 |
Publication status | Published - 2006 |
Keywords
- philology, modern
- intellect