{"title":"\"Floated invincibly\": Animating Character in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time","authors":"Pamela L. Weidman","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.a905802","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay uses early twentieth-century animation to understand Marcel Proust's surprisingly minimalist approach to detail, and how In Search of Lost Time reworks the connection between the limits of description and autonomous character. Proust's Search and films by Georges Méliès and Émile Cohl share a guiding concern with how to bring characters \"to life\" out of relatively simple elements. In his attempts to understand others, Proust's Narrator returns to a few typifying details, and layers them against changing backgrounds, so that his characters remain identifiable even as they undergo continuous social and aesthetic transformations, beyond the purview of his gaze. As well as informing an approach to Proustian character, this essay illuminates the films' staging of elaborate ethical encounters between animator and character. In this way, the techniques of animation provide a set of cross-medial tools for understanding aesthetic vision and character at the start of the twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"55 1","pages":"267 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.a905802","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:This essay uses early twentieth-century animation to understand Marcel Proust's surprisingly minimalist approach to detail, and how In Search of Lost Time reworks the connection between the limits of description and autonomous character. Proust's Search and films by Georges Méliès and Émile Cohl share a guiding concern with how to bring characters "to life" out of relatively simple elements. In his attempts to understand others, Proust's Narrator returns to a few typifying details, and layers them against changing backgrounds, so that his characters remain identifiable even as they undergo continuous social and aesthetic transformations, beyond the purview of his gaze. As well as informing an approach to Proustian character, this essay illuminates the films' staging of elaborate ethical encounters between animator and character. In this way, the techniques of animation provide a set of cross-medial tools for understanding aesthetic vision and character at the start of the twentieth century.
期刊介绍：
From its inception, Studies in the Novel has been dedicated to building a scholarly community around the world-making potentialities of the novel. Studies in the Novel started as an idea among several members of the English Department of the University of North Texas during the summer of 1965. They determined that there was a need for a journal “devoted to publishing critical and scholarly articles on the novel with no restrictions on either chronology or nationality of the novelists studied.” The founding editor, University of North Texas professor of contemporary literature James W. Lee, envisioned a journal of international scope and influence. Since then, Studies in the Novel has staked its reputation upon publishing incisive scholarship on the canon-forming and cutting-edge novelists that have shaped the genre’s rich history. The journal continues to break new ground by promoting new theoretical approaches, a broader international scope, and an engagement with the contemporary novel as a form of social critique.
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