Proust – Course Outline


10 slots

Slot 1

Internet Resources for the course : Proust on the net ; electronic texts

Theoretical framework : Paillard and Chuquet

Lexical resources : OED and Le Grand Robert (demo citations)

Paper editions : Gallimard Quarto ;

translations : 1) Moncrieff – revised Kilmartin – revised Enright

                    2) the new Penguin translation : a look at critical reviews
Introduction to Proust : EB, Geene and Birkerts (ref. to Shattuck)

Reading the introduction to the Moncrieff-Kilmartin-Enright translation

Translating the titles (Moncrieff, revised Moncrieff, Penguin)

Slot 2

Extract from Du côté de Guermantes : Le pépiement matinal

A close look at the text and translation

Translating into a more closely related language : the Italian translations (Steiner on Quasimodo translating Ovid : the traps)

Focusing on the notion of translation problem with respect to lexical resources : the need to rephrase

The need to react against translation as dilution (How to get from 11 to 24 words)

The two pulls : towards the reader, towards the source text (a study of the translations of Hopkins’ Duns Scotus’s Oxford)

Slot 3

Combray : comparing Moncrieff’s and the revised translation

Slot 4

Harmony and tension between grammatical gender and natural gender (I) 

The gender system in French, English and Italian

The mwu ‘mauvais genre’

Slot 5

Harmony and tension between grammatical gender and natural gender (II)

The opening of Un Amour de Swann

“la petite phrase”

Slot 6

Harmony and tension between grammatical gender and natural gender (III)

Convergent and divergent metaphors

Miss Sacripant’s portrait

Slot 7

Social Comedy in Swann in Love

Slot 8

Monsieur de Norpois’s clichés: Within a Budding Grove (I)

Slot 9

Within a Budding Grove (II)

Slot 10

The Guermantes Way

(Slot 11

Sodom and Gomorrah

Slot 12

Provision for lagging behind…)