Nietzsche and Proust

A Comparative Study

Duncan Large author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:20th Sep '01

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Nietzsche and Proust cover

This book combines a Nietzschean reading of Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu with a Proustian reading of time and transcendence in Nietzsche's philosophy. Drawing in particular on Gilles Deleuze's early studies of the two writers, it argues (against Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva) that they pursue a parallel programme of overcoming post-Kantian idealism through an emphasis on the materiality of the body and the 'genealogy' of its interpretations. 'Proust's perspectivism' is analysed in the context of Nietzsche's radical epistemological relativism, the key themes of involuntary memory and eternal recurrence are read together as elements in a shared aesthetics of self-creation, and in conclusion the complex temporalities of Nietzsche and Proust's 'untimely' texts are shown to issue into the problematics of the 'postmodern'.

Admirably combative approach ... engrossing and highly persuasive investigation ... one is sorry to come to the end of this absorbing demonstration of what a sympathetic and keen-eared comparatism can do to reconcile reluctant bedfellows, to their mutual benefit. * Modern Language Review *

ISBN: 9780199242276

Dimensions: 224mm x 145mm x 22mm

Weight: 476g

312 pages