Proust: identity,time and the postmodern condition

The self as the identification of the self with itself is a product of the dynamic transformation of European culture beginning in the Renaissance. The self, or absolute ego, was an outgrowth of the consciously rationalist spirit. However, modernity's Faustian drive was conscious paradoxically without being self conscious of itself or its cultural creations. Modernism deconstructed the values and assumptions of modernity. A casualty was the problematization of the self that had been banished and/or erased by formalism, structuralism and deconstruction.

The modernist self erases the absolute ego reconstructing it with a rich, complex, narrative idea of a self‐conscious relational self encompassing memory, repression, autobiography and history.

This paper explores the modernist conception of self in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Proust demolishes the absolute ego in favor of the paradoxical self which knows itself only in relation to otherness actualized in persons and culture in the sacred time of existence.     

Sex,Fashion, Work: James Joyce and the Late-Victorian Actress

This article considers the presence of three late-Victorian actresses (Mrs Patrick Campbell, Eleonora Duse, and Sarah Bernhardt) in the work of James Joyce. The first appears in Joyce’s short story ‘A Mother’ (Dubliners). The strong influence of the other two is also detectable in the characterization of Ulysses’ heroines, Gerty MacDowell and Molly Bloom, and in a seminal text of late modernism, Finnegans Wake. In ‘A Mother’, Joyce’s attention to the importance of fashion on the stage and to poor working conditions for female performers calls to mind the career of Mrs Patrick Campbell. In Ulysses, Gerty’s performance in ‘Nausicaa’ recalls the techniques of the Ibsenian actress Eleonora Duse, known especially for her blushing; I argue that, given this famous skill and Joyce’s fascination with her, Duse directly informs Gerty’s characterization. Finally, Molly Bloom’s repertoire of dramatic references, including Trilby, Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt, publicity photographs, and Pineroticism, suggests Joyce’s immersion in a late-Victorian dramatic world. After sketching these connections in detail, I show that his interest in these actresses encourages scholars to continue to question the validity of traditional periodization boundaries. I end by arguing that the appearance of these actresses in these examples of early, high, and late modernism indicates the cultural richness of the long nineteenth century for Joyce, which continues throughout modernism’s successive phases.     

Premises of Visuality: Max Blecher and Marcel Proust

In this article we discuss the modern premises of visuality and the effects of the cultural transfer of optical and photographic techniques on the work of Max Blecher, a Romanian Jewish writer who was a keen explorer of Marcel Proust’s works. In his works Blecher pursued the same theme as Proust—the mechanisms of interior memory and life—and often used optical instruments as a metaphor of identity. The role of the photographic model in his depiction of social tableaux, characters, and dispositions, originated partly in the influence of Proust’s writing and partly in other techniques of the European literary avant-gardes.