Marcel Proust et la forme linguistique de la ‘Recherche’ by Geneviève Henrot Sostero et Isabelle Serça (review)

Ever since the publication of À la recherche du temps perdu, the novel’s language has attracted critical attention, and the excellent ten-page bibliography of linguistic and stylistic studies on Proust provided at the end of the present collection testifies to the richness of the field. This volume sets out to explore aspects of the linguistic form of À la recherche with a view to unravelling how an idiosyncratic use turns a langue — a set of norms shared by a community — into literature. Close-ups of specific rhetorical, grammatical, and lexical phenomena examined in a synchronic and/or a diachronic perspective allow the authors to highlight how certain stylistic effects are achieved and to challenge clichés. Thus Stéphanie Fonvielle’s analyses of Proust’s use of maxims and (with Hugues Galli) of the distinguo provide brilliant insights into the rhetorical tradition that comes to serve Proust’s textual architectural purposes, while Geneviève Henrot Sostero argues that the various forms of dislocation contribute to the effect of a seamless fondu-enchaîné of the text. Sylvie Bougeard-Pierron’s revisiting of the author’s allegedly innovative vocabulary, on the other hand, demonstrates that Proust, rather than being an inventor, was an absorptive reader picking up rarities and novelties from all possible sources. Discussing the text’s heterogeneity, Michel Sandras concludes that it indicates the integration of different ‘modèle[s] de langue’ (p. 129). Between rhetoric and linguistics, Jacques Dürrenmatt introduces us to the unexpectedly fascinating history of the semicolon and what its use tells us about Proust. Sophie Duval and Stéphane Chaudier move closer to discourse analysis in their respective focus on Jewish humour and irony and the use of the term ‘loi’, while Maribel Peñalver Vicea approaches psychology by examining the potential of autonymy to reveal affects. Isabelle Serça and Davide Vago provide complementary approaches to Proust’s use of synonyms, the first as part of a broader interest in lists that ‘met[tent] en scène l’écriture […] dans ses tâtonnements’ (p. 191), the second with a more specific focus on pseudo-synonyms, concluding that Proust’s practice calls for rethinking established categories. The grammatical issues addressed include the uses and forms of the conditional, confirming the richness of Proust’s syntactic toolkit (Danielle Coltier and Patrick Dendale), and the combination of aujourd’hui with the imperfect, reaffirming Hans Robert Jauss’s challenge to the interpretation of the imperfect as a marker of timelessness (Anna Isabella Squarzina). The genetic approach is also represented by Yasué Kato’s dissection of a description of the ‘petite bande’, which testifies to the gradual expansion, with the reworkings, of the textual network in which the passage inscribes itself. Michele Prandi’s general introduction to the relation between linguistics and literature, followed by Henrot Sostero’s orientational overview of existing linguistic studies on Proust, and Dürrenmatt’s closing summary of the questions that remain to be explored frame the volume. Students of Proust (even without specialized knowledge of linguistics) and linguists intrigued by literary language will find these studies equally rewarding. The index of quoted passages will prove particularly useful for anyone interested in a specific moment in the novel.