Approaches to Teaching Prousts' Fiction and Criticism

Elyane Dezon-Jones is professor of French at Washington University, Saint Louis. She is the author of Proust et l'Ametique (1982) and Marie de gournay: fragments d'un discourse femin (1987). She has edited Proust's Le Cote de Guermantes (1987), Du cote de chez Swann (1992), and Marguerite Yourcenar's Sources 2 (2000). The former editor in chief of Bulletin Marcel Proust, she has published articles on Proust, Yourcenar, and French women writers. She is currently working on a critical edition of Yourcenar's letters. Inge Crosman Wimmers is professor of French studies at Brown University. She is the author of Metaphoric Narration: The Structure and Function of Metaphors in A la recherche du temps perdu (1978), Poetics of Reading: Approaches to the Novel (1988), and Proust and Emotion: The Importance of Affect in A la recherche du temps perdu (2003). She and Susan Suleiman are coeditors of The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (1980). She has published articles on reader-oriented approaches to narrative fiction and literary emotions.

This book is a gold mine for instructors who can apply its wealth of concepts, ideas, and sources to classroom teaching. Furthermore, it serves as an important reference book not just for teachers but also for students, scholars, and anyone interested in gaining a thorough understanding in the study of Proust.--Marie-Magdeleine Chirol, Whittier College