Marcel Proust and the Text as Macrometaphor

Cam Tolton is a professor of French and Cinema Studies at the University
of Toronto.

The structure of Marcel Proust’s monumental novel A la recherche du
temps perdu has been compared to that of a mammoth fresco, a symphony, a
Gothic cathedral, and an epic poem, among other analogies from the world
of art. Jaeck, a University of Saskatchewan professor, argues here that
the novel is structured like a giant metaphor. As a result, the various
networks of themes, images, characters, ideas, places, names, and art
works that intersect in the novel function for a common overriding
metaphorical purpose.

Jaeck systematically develops her argument from a theoretical basis,
which she finds in Proust’s own discussion of metaphor. Then she
methodically demonstrates the layered interconnection of the topics in
Proust’s fiction. (Her longest chapter, 132 out of 200 pages of text,
is appropriately called “Repetition and Cross-referentiality as
Macrometaphor.”) Finally, she begins to relate her methods,
observations, and conclusions to a wider range of literary texts.

The importance of Jaeck’s book resides largely in her careful
structuring of her argument and its proof. Much of her material has been
treated before—most notably in the studies of Proust’s imagery by
Stephen Ullmann and Victor Graham in the 1960s. But Jaeck brings a fresh
and convincing interpretation to the earlier taxonomies.

An offshoot of Jaeck’s study should be the permanent rejection of the
poetic Proust from the canon of realist novelists, where such critics as
Harry Levin have sometimes placed him. Rarely has the Proustian vision
seemed more personal than in Jaeck’s treatment of it.

This is a commendable scholarly work.