My first thought when reading “Combray” by Marcel Proust was, why are these sentences so long? It wasn’t until I continued to read the novel and watch the video on Proust that I realized these unconventional grammatical rules and sentence structure were simply a part of modernism. The reason for the length of sentences became […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with memory, nostalgia, time
“But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, along, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain from a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, upon the ruins of all the rest, bearing without giving away, on […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with childhood, family, memory, time
Hello viewers (in James May’s voice). I did a quick scroll on the blog page and so far almost every post about Proust has been negative. I share similar feelings, so I will try to explain it. The story starts by reminiscing the childhood of the protagonist on a sleepless night. The child is a […]
[Combray] by Marcel Proust is not a page-turner. Every sentence in the book is lengthy and contains long-winded details, and every scene is, in my perspective, descriptive as the protagonist tries to depict everything he feels in the moment. One explicit example is the sentence above. In the sentence, he is trying to describe the […]
“And in the same way, also, the thoughts of the dying are quite often turned toward the aspect of death that is real, painful, dark, visceral, toward the underside of death, which is in fact the side it presents to them and so harshly makes them feel, and which more closely resembles a crushing burden, […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with being, childhood, Dreams, family, memory, space, time
This week’s reading, Combray by Marcel Proust, definitely challenged me. The reading was a lot different than my usual weekly school readings. It was filled with intricate details and imaginative meanings but yet I still found it hard to pay attention. Just a few pages into the reading I found myself confused about the setting […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with childhood, dream, memory, past
Combray: Section 1 The novel opens with the narrator drifting in and out of consciousness, describing all the thoughts and memories that sneak into his mind as fatigue blurs out his rational thinking. The main story told was from his childhood, he recounted the days spent in his grandparents’ house where he was sent to […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with church, family, memory, relationships
Since this is my first blog, I’d like to share what I think are the highlights of my reading of Proust’s “Combray”. I’d like to focus on two broad aspects of my reading of the story: the writing style and the central theme of the novel. First of all, it is obvious that the story […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with childhood, experience, memory, relationships
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is a novel about the friendship between the narrator Elena and Lila. This novel follows many themes that we have noticed in previous readings such as childhood and memory. Although it seems like Elena is in competition with her best friend Lila, I believe Elena does care and looks …
For my penultimate blog post, I found myself reading Agualusa’s text closely to find overlap on the various themes found across the course readings. Memory is something which we looked closely at in all the readings—the certainty of events, and the unreliable narration which so often leads to the label of fiction for the stories. […]
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with convention, Entries, memory, romance world
