Antoine Compagnon, a literary historian and professor at the Collège de France, is the editor of the works of Proust and an heir, as well as a critic, of structuralism. He is, most notably, the author of La Seconde Main, Nous, Michel de Montaigne, La Troisième République des lettres, Le Démon de la théorie and Les Antimodernes.

Not only is Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past about memory, it is also largely about the memory of history and of literature itself. “All of literature lives in Remembrance of Things Past. Literature breathes life into literature as ‘a resurrection of life in its entirety’ in the manner of Michelet’s history,” writes Antoine Compagnon.
Proust and the myth of Orpheus; obliterating a Flaubertian source; interpolation; recognition; the pastiche or remembrance of styles; travestied reminiscences; literary allusions: these fundamental themes of Remembrance of Things Past are explored here by some internationally recognised Proustians.

With contributions by A. Bouillaguet, S. Duval, S. Guindani, N. Mauriac Dyer, P.L. Rey, H. Sakamoto, I. Serça, A. Simon, K. Yoshikawa.


“Proust and memory”: a cliché of literary criticism re-examined in a radical new manner.