Prousts Imaginary Museum

This study of Marcel Prousts creative imagination examines an aspect of the novel that has hitherto been largely overlooked: the authors dependence on secondary visual sources. Proust made constant use of reproductions photographs, engravings, postcards, illustrations in books as sources of reference and as narrative devices in their own right. Furthermore, he consistently chose to use reproductions in preference to originals, whether people, places or works of art. Bringing together for the first time a mass of factual information documenting Prousts use of second-hand images, the author argues that reproductions play a key role in the works complex, multi-layered structure. Rather than being hampered by their limitations, Proust took advantage of their distancing effect to free his imagination and to insert new layers of meaning into his narrative.