Proust’s Imaginary Museum

The Author: Gabrielle Townsend read Modern Languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After a career at a senior level in publishing she returned to academic study, gaining an M.A. in Cultural Memory at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, and then went on to complete a D.Phil. on Proust at Oxford University, supervised by Prof. Malcolm Bowie. She currently helps edit an academic journal and tutors Oxford undergraduates in French literature.

Contents: Proust's reliance on the reproduced image - The reproduction of art: real and fictional works of art in À la recherche du temps perdu - Proust and photography: portraits and imagery: The Narrator as collector and photographer - The photograph in the context of time, death and memory - The 'photographic' narrative techniques of À la recherche - The structural role of reproductions: The character of the reproduction as sign - The reproduction and metaphor.

«In this elegant book (with good reproductions of works of art used by Proust), Townsend has identified a gap in Proustian scholarship [...]. Little consideration has been given thus far to reproduced images and photography. [The book is] a timely critical contribution to the relation between the viewer and the visible [...].» (Nathalie Aubert, Journal of Romance Studies)