Marcel Proust and Spanish America : from critical response to narrative dialogue

The multi-volume novel of Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27), began to receive attention in Spanish America in 1920, and, as Herbert Craig meticulously shows, this French connection would continue throughout the twentieth century. He traces it both through the literary criticism devoted to Proust in the New World and through the impact of the Recherche upon the Spanish American novel, which according Alejo Carpentier was simply revolutionary. Craig explains how the Recherche affected numerous Spanish American novels and short stories in diverse ways, and how Proust's themes and subjects (high society, love, illness and consciousness, etc.) influenced and inspired various writers, particularly those of a modern persuasion, such as Manuel Mujica Láinez, Yolanda Oreamuno, and Alejo Carpentier. Machine generated contents note: Point of Departure: An Intimate Conversation between an Aspiring French Writer and a Young Pianist Born in Venezuela I. Reception and Critical Appreciation of A la recherche du temps perdu in Spanish America The Introduction of Marcel Proust in Spanish America (1920-1928) From Losing a Superficial Proust to Gaining a More Profound One (1929-1949) Establishing a Tradition of Reading and Writing about the Recherche (1950-1970) From the Proust Centennial until the Recent Past (1971-2000) 2. The Early Stages and A Definition of the Literary Relation between Proust and Spanish American Writers The First Examples: El cdntico espiritual (1923) and Ifigenia (1924) The Proustian Apprenticeship of a Generation: The Contempoirneos Rewrite A l'ombre des jeunesfilles enfleurs A Narrative Discussion on Proust in the Sur Group Swann's Way and Other Ways of Following Proust 3. On High Society: Le cote de Guermantes in the New World A Debate over the Appropriateness of Proust's Work as a Model for Spanish America Attempts at Reconciliation: Spanish Americans in Paris and Proustians in Spanish America Using Proust to Defend the Influence of France and the Creativity of the Individual 4. On Love, Illness, and Consciousness: New World Variations on "Un amour de Swann," La prisonniere, and Sodome et Gomorrhe Learning to Understand the Connection between Love and Illness Efforts to Understand Homosexual Love Going Beyond the Psychological Novel (during and since the Boom 159 5. On Art, Artists and their Admirers: "A I'otbre dCes artistes en fleurs" in Spanish America 173 Music and Art in the Novel: Impressionist Descriptions and the Life of an Artist 177 Updated Interpretations of Art and the Artist: RlIatelf and Its Followers 186 Mature Writers in the Novel 198 6. On Lost Time and the Search for It: Spiritual Equivalents of "Combray" and Albertine disparue 212 Childhood as a Lost Paradise 216 The Loss of a Beloved and Attempts at Recovery 227 Time as Change and as a Destructive Force 237 A Culmination of the Themes of Time in the Work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez 244 7. On Involuntary Memory: From Applying the Lessons of Le temps retrouve to Dialoguing with Them 254 Learning How to Integrate Proustian Memory into a Narrative Structure 259 Proustian Memory and Bourgeois Sensuality (1955-1970) 265 Four Extended Narrative Dialogues on Searching for the Past and for Wholeness 274 8. On Becoming a Writer: Following Proust's Way from "Combray" to Le temps retrouve 296 Achieving Success in Writing (and Reading) 299 Notebooks Written in Paris 307 Narrative Confrontations with Failure 317 Final Remarks: From Attention to Detail to the Creation of Vast Syntactical and Narrative Structures for a New Poetic Vision 333 Notes 341 A Bibliography of Marcel Proust in Spanish America 367 Texts by Marcel Proust in Translation 367 Literary Criticism of Proust's Work Written or Published in Spanish America 371 Studies on Literary or Personal Relations between Proust and Spanish Americans 409 Poems, Plays, Pastiches, and Parodies about Proust 417 Testimonials and Other Texts which Demonstrate a Personal Interest in Proust 419 Works Cited 421 Literary Works and Memoirs 421 Critical Studies 425 Index 434. "The multivolume novel of Marcel Proust A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) began to receive attention in Spanish America in 1920, and, as Herbert Craig meticulously shows, this French Connection would continue throughout the twentieth century. He traces it both through the literary criticism devoted to Proust in the New World and through the impact of the Recherche upon the Spanish American novel, which according to Alejo Carpentier was simply revolutionary.". "Craig begins by attributing the early introduction of the Recherche to the intimate friendship between Proust and the pianist-composer Reynaldo Halm, who was born in Caracas. He then shows in chapter 1 how literary critics of the principal newspapers and literary magazines of such countries as Venezuela, Argentina, and Chile examined this French text, which we know today as one of the fundamental works of modernism. Shortly thereafter interest in the Recherche spread to Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, and Colombia. Eventually it would be read in all parts of the New World. Over the years Spanish Americans have continued to write about the Recherche and have published several noteworthy books on it, which are included in the comprehensive bibliography which serves as an appendix."--BOOK JACKET. About the Author Herbert E. Craig earned his master's and doctoral degrees in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master's in French from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1971, when he began to read A la recherche du temps perdu at the time of the Proust Centennial, he attended a lecture delivered at the Collège de France in Paris by the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, which inspired Craig to study the literary relation between Proust and Spanish America. He worked for many years on this subject while teaching Spanish and French at Bethany College in Kansas, and Spanish, Spanish American literature, and translation at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Literary Criticism,European,American,20th Century,History and Criticism,French,Latin American literature,Caribbean & Latin American,Proust; Marcel,Hispanic American,French Influences