For decades, Elisabeth Ladenson says, critics have misread or ignored a crucial element in Marcel Proust's fiction-his representation of lesbians. Her challenging new book definitively establishes the centrality of lesbianism as sexual obsession and aesthetic model in Proust's vast novel A la recherche du temps perdu.

Traditional readings of the Recherche have dismissed Proust's "Gomorrah"-his term for women who love other women-as a veiled portrayal of the novelist's own homosexuality. More recently, "queer-positive" rereadings have viewed the novel's treatment of female sexuality as ancillary to its accounts of Sodom and its meditations on time and memory. Ladenson instead demonstrates the primacy of lesbianism to the novel, showing that Proust's lesbians are the only characters to achieve a plenitude of reciprocated desire. The example of Sodom, by contrast, is characterized by frustrated longing and self-loathing. She locates the work's paradigm of hermetic relations between women in the self-sufficient bond between the narrator's mother and grandmother. Ladenson traces Proust's depictions of male and female homosexuality from his early work onward, and contextualizes his account of lesbianism in late-nineteenth-century sexology and early twentieth-century thought.

A vital contribution to the fields of queer theory and of French literature and culture, Ladenson's book marks a new stage in Proust studies and provides a fascinating chapter in the history of a literary masterpiece's reception.

About the Author

Elisabeth Ladenson is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Reviews

A remarkably close reading of Proust's remarkably long novel, Ladenson's persuasive book will change the way we interpret Proust.... Ladenson's prose is also quite gratifying to read-a rare thing in the Academy that makes this erudite book both provocative and immensely entertaining.

* Virginia Quarterly Review *

Carefully orchestrated.... Ladenson scours Proust's early work... and converts the scattered evidence of lesbianism into a genuinely thought-provoking synthesis.

* Times Literary Supplement *

Through a series of finely articulated, close re-readings of Proust's Recherche, this book... provides us with what amounts to be no less than a systematic reassessment of the novel's entire sexual economy, the cornerstone of which being precisely what has been so far mostly ignored or dismissed by critics: Proust's representation of female homosexuality. A brilliant contribution to both the field of queer studies and Proustian criticism.

* Modern and Contemporary France *



Book Information
ISBN 9780801473500
Author Elisabeth Ladenson
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 13mm