
Overview
Best known for his epic seven-volume magnum opus À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past), Marcel Proust was a giant of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary masterpiece continues to challenge and inspire readers. In Simply Proust, Professor Jack Louis Jordan explores this singular work, and illuminates the complex relationship between the author’s life and the world he created, a world that reaches beyond the book to engage the reader in exciting and unexpected ways.
Description
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was born in Paris during a time of great social and political upheaval, a ferment that is dealt with extensively in his monumental work In Search of Lost Time. He was a sickly child and spent the earlier part of his short life pursuing a variety of sometimes frivolous activities, which led to his not being taken seriously as a writer. It was not until 1909, when he was 38 years old, that he began work on the groundbreaking novel for which he is known, a task that consumed the rest of his life.
In Simply Proust, Professor Jack Louis Jordan presents an incisive, yet thoroughly accessible, introduction to Proust’s landmark work, helping the reader to fully appreciate the scope of the author’s achievement, as well as the fascinating process that underlay its creation. Emphasizing the fundamental role of psychology and the unconscious, Jordan shows how Proust’s methodology and our understanding of his novel are connected, and how this makes for a unique and endlessly revealing literary experience.
At once philosophical, psychological and deeply human, Simply Proust offers an invaluable entry point into a masterpiece of world literature and takes the measure of the flawed and brilliant man who transformed the material of his life into a transcendent work of art.
About the author
A professor of French who served seven years as department head at Mississippi State University before his retirement in 2015, Jack Louis Jordan specializes in twentieth-century French literature, with an emphasis on Marcel Proust. He has written many articles on both Proust and the French literature of the Caribbean, and is the author of Marcel Proust’s "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu": A Search for Certainty (1993) and the chapter “The Unconscious” in The Cambridge Companion to Proust (2001).
About the series
Simply Charly's Great Lives Series offers brief, but authoritative introductions to the world's most influential people—scientists, artists, writers, economists, and other historical figures whose contributions have had a meaningful and enduring impact on our society. Each book, presented in an engaging, accessible and entertaining fashion, offers an illuminating look at their works, ideas and personal lives, and the legacies they left behind.