The gardens of desire
Subtitle: Marcel Proust and the fugitive sublime
By: by Stephen Gilbert Brown.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 243
Subjects: Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Desire in literature.
Description: "The Gardens of Desire is at once a model of literary interpretation and a groundbreaking psychocritical reading of a literary masterpiece, Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). Shedding new light on the origins of the creative impulse in general, and on the psychological origins of the Recherche in particular, the book illuminates the hidden associations between matricidal, suicidal, sadistic, masochistic, homoerotic, and creative impulses as manifested in Proust's work. The book moves beyond traditional Freudian readings of Proust to consider the theories of Otto Rank, Jacques Derrida, and others, and provides readings of the "privileged moments" that comprise many of the work's "critical cruxes," as well as a rereading of the novel's ending. This book explores the violence of desire as it relates not only to Proust's narrator, but also to Proustian criticism itself, with its own violent desire to appropriate the essence of Proust's masterpiece."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-240) and index.