Sounding Bodies : Eroticized Music-Making in Proust’s À la Recherche

• Scholarship has emphasized the importance of technological innovations to modernism in general and to Marcel Proust in particular, not only as a recurrent element in narratives, but also as a crucial factor in the sensory perception of the world. In Proust's novel, the desires that need to be thus channeled are all homosexual ones, which repeatedly intermingle with music-making. The most obvious example is Baron de Charlus, who plays a vital role in Proust's accounts of homosexuality. A little scene is played out, which is almost always suppressed in accounts of Proust and music, but which in fact contains the last musical performance in the whole novel. In order to broach anew the time-honored topic of music in the work of Proust, the chapter presents an anecdote from 1916. What is needed in order to redress this imbalance is an account of the liveness of music-making in A la recherche, geared towards bodily interaction and erotic intimacy.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Proust

music

sexuality

litteraturvetenskap

Literature

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)