Proust's English

English is the "second language" of A la recherche du temps perdu. Although much has been written about Proust's debt to English literature, especially Ruskin, Daniel Karlin is the first critic to focus on his knowledge of the language itself—on vocabulary, idiom, and etymology. He uncovers an "English world" in Proust's work, a world whose social comedy and artistic values reveal surprising connections to some of the novel's central preoccupations with sexuality and art. Anglomanie—the fashion for all things English—has been as powerful a presence in French culture as hostility to perfide Albion; Proust was both subject to its influence, and a brilliant critic of its excesses. French resistance to imported English words remains fierce to this day; but Proust's attitude to this most contentious aspect of Anglo-French relations was marked by his rejection of concepts of national and racial "purity," and his profound understanding of the necessary "impurity" of artistic creation.

Library Journal

Karlin (English, University Coll., London; coeditor, The Poems of Robert Browning) analyzes French novelist Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) and the English vocabulary that exists in this literary masterpiece, revealing an English world therein. He describes such French high-society trends as Anglomanie ("an excessive admiration" for all things English), which contributed to the frequent use of English words and phrases by Proust and his characters. The etymological descriptions of French words introduced into the English lexicon and later reintroduced to the French as English words are very interesting. Karlin suggests that in Proust's work English exists as an intermediate language. He cites numerous passages to substantiate his theories, concluding that English is the "second language of the novel." An appendix that lists English words found in A la recherche rounds out the text. This valuable contribution to Proustian studies is highly recommended for academic libraries that support French literature and language studies.-Erica Swenson Danowitz, American Univ. Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Daniel Karlin is Professor of English at University College London and University Professor at Boston University.