French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Athias, La Voix dans À la Recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust
Novel and Narrative Prose
Béatrice Athias
La Voix dans À la Recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust
Paris, Classiques Garnier, coll. Bibliothèque proustienne, 2021
EAN: 9782406104179 — 451 p. — 45 €
In À la recherche du temps perdu, the act of writing and the production of the voice converge. While the writing of the novel bears witness to an eroticization of the voice, the narrator remains wary of this deceptive object linked to the social self. Yet this aporia is ultimately overcome in favor of a musical mode of writing.
Introduction 11
The Voice of an Era 11
The Voice as Object 18
An Enigmatic and Paradoxical Literary Voice 24
PART ONE
FROM THE QUEST FOR THE VOICE TO ITS RECEPTION
Elusive Voices 29
The Physiological and Material Contingencies of Listening 29
Obstacles to the Transmission of the Voice 29
The Masking Effect of Interfering Voices 45
Universal Babel: Linguistic and Ideological Misunderstandings
51
The Impaired Listening to French as a Foreign Language 51
Ideological Configuration of Listening
and Language Practice 61
The Language of the Other Is Always a Foreign Language 68
In Search of the Impossible Truth of the Beloved 80
The Mystery of the Woman with the Composite Voice 80
The Art of War 85
The Jealous Lover’s Inner Voice 97
The Hallucinatory Dialogue 108
Fruitless Collaborations Between Listening and the Gaze 112
The Gaze Summoned by Listening 112
The Limits of the Gaze 122
Towards an Open Perception of the Voice 135
How to Feel Voices 135
The Pitfalls of Opticentric Listening
or the Lessons of the Theater 135
The Joyful Experience of Synesthetic Listening 146
Listening Beyond the Voice 156
Breath in the Voice 156
Music or the Song of the Ineffable 161
PART TWO
FROM CAPTIVATING VOICES TO CAPTURED VOICES
Vocal Passions 175
The Maternal Virtues of the Voice 175
The Musicality of the Soaring Voice 175
The Voice as the Site of the Mother 201
The Erotics of Voices 219
Jouissance-Producing Voices, Voices Experiencing Jouissance 219
Perverse Enjoyments of the Voice 242
The Autoeroticism of Voices 262
Intoxication with One's Own Voice 262
The Voice Within 267
The Entanglement of Inner and Outer Voices 273
The Voices of the Divided Self 284
From the Lethal Voice to the Living Letter 305
The Hazards of the Voice 305
Phenomena of Annihilating Domination 305
The Shock of the Father's Booming Voice 342
The Asphyxiating Voice 349
The Necessity of Silence 354
Silencing the Voices 354
Revealing that the Letter Precedes the Voice 370
The Author's Vocal Imprint 385
The Voice Emerging from the Book 385
The Voice Embodied in Writing 390
Conclusion 411
The Materiality of the Literary Voice 411
The Voice as the Subject of Writing 414
A Vocal Reading 416
Bibliography 421
Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu is a major work of modernist French literature, known for its psychological depth and stylistic complexity. Sensory perception is a significant element in how the narrator of the novel navigates his environment. This study examines the auditory dimension of the novel, focusing on the role of the voice. It addresses the tension between the deceptive voice of the social self and the ultimate transition toward a musical mode of writing, exploring how the act of writing and the production of the voice converge.
The relationship between speech and writing is a central theme in twentieth-century literary theory, which often explores how oral expression relates to the written text. The volume's chapters cover themes such as the maternal aspects of the voice, the erotics of the voice, and the physical limitations of listening. The text addresses topics ranging from the hazards of vocal domination to the role of the written letter. Readers interested in Proustian scholarship, modernist aesthetics, or the literary representation of the senses may find this study relevant.