Mirages and Mad Beliefs

Christopher Prendergast is professor emeritus of French at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of King's College and the British Academy. He is the general editor of the Penguin translation of In Search of Lost Time.

• Acknowledgments vii References and Abbreviations ix CHAPTER ONE Mad Belief 1 CHAPTER TWO Proustian Jokes 29 CHAPTER THREE Magic 60 CHAPTER FOUR Eblouissement 84 CHAPTER FIVE What's in a Comma? 104 CHAPTER SIX Walking on Stilts 130 CHAPTER SEVEN Bodies and Ghosts 161 CHAPTER EIGHT The Citizen of the Unknown Homeland 189 Index 217

Winner of the 2015 R. Gapper Prize, Society for French Studies "[A] deliciously rich interrogation of the French novelist's oeuvre... Prendergast has baked a millefeuille of a book here, crisp, rich and multilayered. Read it for its exposition of jokes, of magic, enchantment and spectrality, of the Proustian body (a place 'where we live but not where we are at home'), as well as for its awkward questions. Refusing to treat Proust as a celebrant, this book interrogates his gloriously mad project, while also amply fulfilling its intention to 'stay alert, with one of the most alert minds of modern literature.'"--Mary Bryden, Times Higher Education "Prendergast ... has produced a study that makes readers want to take a fresh look at the work--perhaps the best accomplishment for literary criticism."--Edward Ousselin, French Review