Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 1-1-2015 Communicating through Cork: Marcel Proust's Performative Call to Philosophy of Communication David DeIuliis Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation DeIuliis, D. (2015). Communicating through Cork: Marcel Proust's Performative Call to Philosophy of Communication (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/76 This Worldwide Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COMMUNICATING THROUGH CORK: MARCEL PROUST’S PERFORMATIVE CALL TO PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosopy By David DeIuliis December 2015 Copyright by David DeIuliis 2015 COMMUNICATING THROUGH CORK: MARCEL PROUST’S PERFORMATIVE CALL TO PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION By David DeIuliis Approved October 23, 2015 ________________________________ ________________________________ Ronald C. Arnett, Ph.D. Janie Harden Fritz, Ph.D. Professor of Communication & Rhetorical Professor of Communication & Rhetorical Studies Studies (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Richard Thames, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Communication & Rhetorical Studies (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James Swindal, Ph.D. Ronald C. Arnett, Ph.D. Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate Chair, Department of Communication & School of Liberal Arts Rhetorical Studies Professor of Philosophy Professor of Communication & Rhetorical Studies iii ABSTRACT COMMUNICATING THROUGH CORK: MARCEL PROUST’S PERFORMATIVE CALL TO PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION By David DeIuliis December 2015 Dissertation supervised by Ronald C. Arnett, Ph.D. Philosophy of communication replaces modernity’s metanarrative of progress with postmodernity’s many works in progress. The metanarrative of postmodernity is fragmentation, the lack of a metanarrative. In postmodernity, progress sputters and stalls, then starts on new paths. Philosophy of communication responds to fragmentation by converging the fragments of philosophy and communication. In his life and work, Marcel Proust (1871-1922) embodied the duality of philosophy of communication. Proust recognized the false grandeur behind the gold gilding of the Belle Epoque in nineteenth-century France, and reframed progress as a series of fits and starts, where the self follows false scents in a search for self-fulfillment. Proust wrote the collection of Les plaisirs et les jours (English: Pleasures and Days) and the unfinished Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve (English: Against Sainte-Beuve) while still preoccupied with Parisian high society. During the First World War, he retired to the solitude of his cork-lined iv bedroom and wrote what many consider to be the best novel of the twentieth century. Proust’s early works are fits and starts for his philosophy of communication in his magnum opus À la recherche du temps perdu (English: In Search of Lost Time). Just as philosophy of communication is a duality of philosophy and communication, each person for Proust is a duality of many superficial selves (communication) and the one, incommunicable true self (philosophy). Superficial selves communicate appearances in conversation that reflects social convention. The true self translates the essence, or cream of oneself into a work of art as an expression of the true self in solitude. For Proust, only art affirms fragmentation as a philosophy of communication. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….. ……iv PART I: Proust’s Philosophy of Communication against the Background of the Belle Epoque….3 Chapter 1: Arc of the Magic Lantern: Marcel Proust’s Philosophy of Communication……5 Chapter 2: Marcel Proust in his Historical Moment……………………………………….45 PART II: On the Path to Proust’s Philosophy of Communication: Les plaisirs et les jours, Jean Santeuil, and Contre Sainte-Beuve……………………………………………………………………....89 Chapter 3: Les plaisirs et les jours: Fragments of a Philosophy of Communication……...92 Chapter 4: Jean Santeuil: The Experimental Vehicle for Proust’s Vision……………….126 Chapter 5: Contre Sainte-Beuve: The Final Hurdle to A la recherché………………...……161 PART III: Proust’s Performative Call to Communication in A la recherché…………………..193 Chapter 6: A la recherché: Bridging the Binary of Philosophy and Communication……196 Chapter 7: Proust’s Change of Heart: A Goodnight Kiss to Communication……………239 vi Communicating through Cork: Marcel Proust’s Performative Call to Philosophy of Communication Philosophy of communication replaces modernity’s metanarrative of progress with postmodernity’s many “works in progress.”1 The metanarrative of postmodernity is fragmentation, the lack of a metanarrative. In postmodernity, progress sputters and stalls, then starts on new paths. Philosophy of communication responds to fragmentation by converging the fragments of philosophy and communication. In his life and work, Marcel Proust (1871-1922) embodied the duality of philosophy of communication. Proust recognized the false grandeur behind the gold gilding of the Belle Epoque in nineteenth-century France, and reframed progress as a series of fits and starts, where the self follows “false scents”2 in a search for self-fulfillment. Proust wrote the collection of Les plaisirs et les jours (English: Pleasures and Days) and the unfinished Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve (English: Against Sainte-Beuve) while still preoccupied with Parisian high society. During the First World War, he retired to the solitude of his cork-lined bedroom and wrote what many consider to be the best novel of the twentieth century. Proust’s early works are fits and starts for his philosophy of communication in À la recherche du temps perdu (English: In Search of Lost Time).3 Just as philosophy of communication is a duality of philosophy and communication, each person for Proust is a duality 1 Suzanne Clark, “Julia Kristeva: Rhetoric and the Woman as Stranger,” in Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition, ed. Andrea Lunsford (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press), 308. 2 Roger Shattuck, Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 71. 3 In addition to many short stories and articles, Proust wrote one novel: À la recherche du temps perdu. À la recherche was first translated into English by C.K. Scott Moncrieff between 1922 and 1930 in 6 volumes under the title Remembrance of Things Past. Considered a masterpiece in its own right, Moncrieff’s translation was based on an incomplete original French manuscript. In 1981, Proust scholar Terrence Kilmartin revised Moncrieff’s translation in three volumes using a new French manuscript published by the Bibliotheque La Pléiade in 1954 and revised in 1987. Using the 1987 “La Pléiade" edition, Modern Library published in 1992 a revision of Kilmartin’s translation by D.J. Enright in six volumes under the title In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, Penguin published a new translation based on the same French edition by six different translators under the general editorship of Christopher Prendergast. Most recently, Yale University Press commissioned Proust biographer William C. Carter to annotate and revise the original Moncrieff translation. Following Shattuck and most English language Proust scholarship, this paper refers to the 1992 Kilmartin translation in six volumes revised by Enright. References in the original French are to the 1987 Pleiade edition, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié. 1 of many superficial selves (communication) and the one, incommunicable true self (philosophy). Superficial selves communicate appearances in conversation that reflects social convention. The true self translates the essence4 or cream5 of oneself into a work of art as an expression of the true self in solitude. For Proust, only art affirms fragmentation as a philosophy of communication. In Part I (chapters 1 and 2) of this dissertation, I outline the origins of Proust’s philosophy of communication in the historical moment of nineteenth-century France, from the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune through the Belle Epoque and First World War. I then frame Proust’s view of communication within terms of five philosophical binaries: (1) reality and appearance, (2) general and particular, (3) climax and anti-climax, (4) intermittence and stability, and (5) sociality and solitude. Next, I explicate Proust’s mature philosophy of communication in two parts: (1) the translation6 into a work of art (e.g., A la recherché)7 of one’s true self as glimpsed in impressions, or “isolated perceptions”8 that reveal the reality behind the appearance of others and objects and (2) the recognition of the reader’s true self in the work of art. In Part II (chapters 3, 4, and 5) I argue that Proust’s early works, from the youthful Les plaisirs et les jours (chapter 3) to the experimental Jean Santeuil (chapter 5) to the visionary Contre Sainte-Beuve (chapter 4), are to varying degrees failures in philosophy of communication that overrely on communication in Les plaisirs et les jours, then overcompensate for