Memory and Identity in French Literature: Proust to the Present

Undergraduate / Graduate

This introductory-level course takes as its point of departure Marcel Proust's conceptualization of memory as the foundation both for the self and for literature. For Proust, literary style conveys the singularity of an individual vision while rescuing experience from the contingencies of time. Literature, identity, and memory are inseparable. Later writers will follow Proust's lead in defining literature as an art of memory; but they develop this art in different ways, whether by inventing new forms of life-writing or attempting to revive, via fiction, a lived connection to history. How does memory serve as the foundation of individual or collective identities? How does fiction imagine and give form to memory, and how does literature serve as a medium for cultural memory? How do literary works register the intermittence of memory, its failings and distortions, its fragility as well as its attachment to bodies and places? We will tackle these questions through close analysis of a range of texts. In addition to Proust, authors studied may include Yourcenar, Perec, Modiano, Roubaud, and Ernaux.