Focusing on a moment and a source in nineteenth-century France, Christopher Prendergast takes up a big question that is still with us: What is a classic? The question is, by virtue of its insistent recurrence, itself a classic question. It returns to haunt us. It provided the title of a text for French critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve in 1850 ("Qu'est-ce qu'un classique?"), as it did in the twentieth century for T.S. Eliot and John Coetzee. Centring on Sainte-Beuve in his nineteenth-century context, Prendergast's inquiry takes us historically to many places (antiquity, the middle ages, the seventeenth and eighteenth as well as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). He also provides an intellectual history that travels across multiple disciplinary territories (in addition to literary criticism and literary history, classical studies, comparative philology, historiography and political thought).
Against this background, The Classic maps the evolution of Sainte-Beuve's thought from an initially cosmopolitan conception of the classic (close in spirit to Goethe's notion of Weltliteratur) to an increasingly nationalist conception, with a strong emphasis on the heritage of Latinity and France as its principal legatee. This emphasis was taken up by the extreme right in France after Sainte-Beuve's death, in a determined mobilizing of a version of the "classic" on behalf of a proto-fascist agenda. The final chapter deals with this appropriation and ends with a question of our own about Sainte-Beuve's original question: in the light of this bleak history, perhaps the time has come to dispense with the term "classic" altogether.

"Recent Developments in the Theory of Social Structure" is an integrated collection of essays reviewing and assessing progress in social structural analysis since 1970. Organizationally, the book is divided into six parts corresponding to six analytical levels of social structure: social relationships, social networks, intraorganizational relations, interorganizational relations, societal stratification and the world system. The ten essays expound and assess what has been learned about the influences of social structure on human behaviour at each level of analysis. In the introduction, the editors examine the metatheoretical issues in structural analysis and promote the cause of theory integration.

What are counterfactuals and what is their point? In many cases, none at all. It may be true that if kangaroos didn't have tails, they would fall over, but they do have tails and if they didn't they wouldn't be kangaroos (or would they?). This is the sort of thing that can give counterfactuals a bad name, as inhabitants of a La La Land of the mind. On the other hand, counterfactuals do useful service across a broad range of disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy, history, cosmology, biology, cognitive psychology, jurisprudence, economics, art history, literary theory. They are also richly, albeit sometimes treacherously, present in the everyday human realm of how our lives are both imagined and lived: in the 'crossroads' scenario of decision-making, the place of regret in retrospective assessments of paths taken and not taken, and, at the outer limit, as the wish not to have been born. Christopher Prendergast take us on a dizzying exploratory journey through some of these intellectual and human landscapes, mobilizing a wide range of reference from antiquity to the present, and sustained by the belief that, whether as help or hindrance, and with many variations across cultures, counterfactual thinking and imagining are fundamental to what it is to be human.

A LIFETIME'S READING OF PROUST'S MASTERPIECE "A work buzzing with appetite and curiosity."-Andrew Marr, author and broadcaster "Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is a feast."-Lydia Davis, winner of the Man Booker International Prize One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction, A la recherche du temps perdu belongs in the tradition of the Initiation Story, the journey it describes combining elements drawn from the earlier narratives of great expectations and lost illusions, while recasting them in ways that are distinctively Proust's. On the year that marks the centenary of Marcel Proust's death, the eminent literary scholar, Christopher Prendergast, traces that journey as it unfolds on an arc defined by the polarity of his title, living and dying. His book offers a chapter by chapter exploration of the rich sensory and impressionistic tapestry of a lived world, woven by the pulse of desire, the hauntings of memory and an ever alert responsiveness to tastes, perfumes, sounds, and colours. It also traces the construction of a unique architecture of narrative time and a corresponding mode of story-telling, marked by all manner of loops, swerves, detours, regressions and returns, from the macro level of the novel's plot to the micro level of the famously elaborate Proustian sentence. The lives of his characters, both major and minor, are shown as criss-crossing and converging in ways that often take the reader by surprise, before descending the arc on an irreversible trajectory of decline, as the body starts to fail and the grave beckons.

This book presents an overview of that theoretical framework known as symbolic interactionism. It details the major intellectual and philosophical antecedents of the interactionist perspective, i.e., evolutionism, Scottish moral philosophy, German idealism, pragmatism, and functional psychology. Under the heading evolutionism, the Darwinian notion of the mutually determinative relationship existing between environments and organisms is discussed, as are Henri Bergson's conceptions of the nature of radical, abrupt departures from earlier life forms and of the emergence of novel events. Scottish moral philosophers are dealt with in terms of their contribution to the conceptual inventory of symbolic interactionism. Of particular relevance here are concepts such as the impartial spectator 'sympathy', the 'I', the 'Me', 'role taking', 'generalized other', and 'looking-glass self.' Those German idealists exerting an impact on George Herbert Mead and symbolic interactionism, namely, Fichte, Von Schelling, Kant, and Hegel receive mention. American pragmatic philosophy is then summarized, and special attention is given to the writings of Charles S. Pierce, William James, and John Dewey. The second chapter discusses the major early interactionists, i.e., Charles Horton Cooley, William Isaac Thomas, and George Herbert Mead. Part two discusses the principal varieties of contemporary symbolic interactionism. Major 'schools' receiving attention are the 'Chicago School', the 'Iowa School', the 'Dramaturgical Genre', and 'Ethnomethodology.' A unique feature of this section is that it ends with an attempt to provide a single sentence description of the symbolic interactionist viewpoint. Mead's writings are dealt with in terms of his utilization of such pivotal concepts as symbols, role taking, self, society, and mind. A listing of the primary characteristics of the early interactionism closes out this section of the book. The third section provides a representative set of criticisms of interactionism. They are provided by interactionists and also by those who favor other sociological orientations. Both early and contemporary interactionism come under fire, and the criticisms range from the mild to the sharp. The perspective stands accused, by friend and foe alike, of being quaint, ahistorical, noneconomic, imprecise, and apolitical. It has also ignored the unconscious and emotive components in human behavior, and it manifests a rather strong astructural bias. Interactionists may now be in the process of correcting these defects.

This book presents an overview of that theoretical framework known as symbolic interactionism. It details the major intellectual and philosophical antecedents of the interactionist perspective, i.e., evolutionism, Scottish moral philosophy, German idealism, pragmatism, and functional psychology. Under the heading evolutionism, the Darwinian notion of the mutually determinative relationship existing between environments and organisms is discussed, as are Henri Bergson's conceptions of the nature of radical, abrupt departures from earlier life forms and of the emergence of novel events. Scottish moral philosophers are dealt with in terms of their contribution to the conceptual inventory of symbolic interactionism. Of particular relevance here are concepts such as the impartial spectator "sympathy," the "I," the "Me," "role taking," "generalized other," and "looking-glass self." Those German idealists exerting an impact on George Herbert Mead and symbolic interactionism, namely, Fichte, Von Schelling, Kant, and Hegel receive mention. American pragmatic philosophy is then summarized, and special attention is given to the writings of Charles S. Pierce, William James, and John Dewey. The second chapter discusses the major early interactionists, i.e., Charles Horton Cooley, William Isaac Thomas, and George Herbert Mead. Part two discusses the principal varieties of contemporary symbolic interactionism. Major "schools" receiving attention are the "Chicago School," the "Iowa School," the "Dramaturgical Genre," and "Ethnomethodology." A unique feature of this section is that it ends with an attempt to provide a single sentence description of the symbolic interactionist viewpoint. Mead's writings are dealt with in terms of his utilization of such pivotal concepts as symbols, role taking, self, society, and mind. A listing of the primary characteristics of the early interactionism closes out this section of the book. The third section provides a representative set of criticisms of interactionism. They are provid

Eugene Sue (1804-57), like his contemporary Alexandre Dumas pere, was one of the most successful writers of his time. Les Mysteres de Paris, the novel for which he is most remembered, became a publishing sensation. In its serial form, it took the public by storm - readers fought for copies of the next instalment - and in book form its print-run reached an unprecedented 60,000. Christopher Prendergast's study engages with the problematic of emerging forms of popular literature on the basis of a specific hypothesis: that Les Mysteres de Paris, written and published in serial form, was, through the pressure of Sue's reader-correspondents (many of them barely literate), a collective production, 'written by the people for the people'. Prendergast examines the phenomenon of popular literature and reader response in the nineteenth century to illuminate larger issues in the sociology of literature.

The Way by Swann’s is one of the great novels of childhood, depicting the impressions of a sensitive boy of his family and neighbours, brought dazzlingly back to life by the famous taste of a madeleine. It contains the separate short novel, A Love of Swann’s, a study of sexual jealousy that forms a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. This book established Proust as one of the greatest voices of the modern age – satirical, sceptical, confiding and endlessly varied in his response to the human condition.

After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world. This elegantly packaged new translation will introduce a new generation of American readers to the literary richness of Marcel Proust.First time in Penguin ClassicsA Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with french flaps and luxurious designPenguin Classics' superb new edition of In Search of Lost Time is the first completely new translation of Proust's masterwork since the 1920s

'Annabel was a black and white figure in the distance, going in through the front doors. She worked behind the reception. I was a history teacher.' As we meet Matt, lying across the backseat of his on/off girlfriend's car, he begins a long confession. It starts with wrestling moves and continues past statue fires, reaching bomb threats and assault via episodes in the life of Franz von Papen, the Chancellor of interwar Germany. Piece by piece, Matt presents us with a map of his failures. Or is he part of some grander, universal fuck-up? Septembers, Christopher Prendergast's debut novel, is a simmering tale of upheaval, revolt and loss.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is a spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, and an unequalled meditation on different forms of love, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside, and his relationships with his grandmother and the Swann family. Here Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup, and introduces two figures who come to dominate the narrator’s life – the Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.

Sodom and Gomorrah--now in a superb translation by John Sturrock--takes up the theme of homosexual love, male and female, and dwells on how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. Proust's novel is also an unforgiving analysis of both the decadent high society of Paris and the rise of a philistine bourgeoisie that is on the way to supplanting it. Characters who had lesser roles in earlier volumes now reappear in a different light and take center stage, notably Albertine, with whom the narrator believes he is in love, and the insanely haughty Baron de Charlus.First time in Penguin ClassicsA Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with French flaps and luxurious designThe first completely new translation of Proust's novel since the 1920s

Marcel Proustas "In Search of Lost Time" is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proustas masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davisas internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, "Swannas Way."

What are counterfactuals and what is their point? In many cases, none at all. It may be true that if kangaroos didn't have tails, they would fall over, but they do have tails and if they didn't they wouldn't be kangaroos (or would they?). This is the sort of thing that can give counterfactuals a bad name, as inhabitants of a La La Land of the mind. On the other hand, counterfactuals do useful service across a broad range of disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy, history, cosmology, biology, cognitive psychology, jurisprudence, economics, art history, literary theory. They are also richly, albeit sometimes treacherously, present in the everyday human realm of how our lives are both imagined and lived: in the 'crossroads' scenario of decision-making, the place of regret in retrospective assessments of paths taken and not taken, and, at the outer limit, as the wish not to have been born. Christopher Prendergast take us on a dizzying exploratory journey through some of these intellectual and human landscapes, mobilizing a wide range of reference from antiquity to the present, and sustained by the belief that, whether as help or hindrance, and with many variations across cultures, counterfactual thinking and imagining are fundamental to what it is to be human.

Moving deftly among literary and visual arts, as well as the modern critical canon, Christopher Prendergast's book explores the meaning and value of representation as both a philosophical challenge (What does it mean to create an image that "stands for" something absent?) and a political issue (Who has the right to represent whom?).

"The Triangle of Representation" raises a range of theoretical, historical, and aesthetic questions, and offers subtle readings of such cultural critics as Raymond Williams, Paul de Man, Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, and H?l?ne Cixous, in addition to penetrating investigations of visual artists like Gros, Ingres, and Matisse and significant insights into Proust and the onus of translating him. Above all, Prendergast's work is a striking display of how a firm grounding in theory is essential for the exploration of art and literature.

This book is a challenging investigation of the idea of literary mimesis in the light of contemporary literary theory. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives developed in and around the work of Barthes, Kristeva, Genette and Derrida, Dr Prendergast explores approaches to the concept of mimesis and relates these to a number of narrative texts produced in the period which literary history familiarly designates as the age of realism: Balzac's Illusions Perdues and Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir, Nerval's Sylvie and Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale. The book is not merely expository however: one of the author's aims is to engage with much of the polemical debate which has surrounded the topic, in the belief that a recognition of the historical conditions determining both the theory and practice of mimesis must be recovered.

‘A giant miniature, full of images, of superimposed gardens, of games conducted between space and time’ 
Jean Cocteau

In this fourth volume, Proust’s novel takes up for the first time the theme of homosexual love – male and female – and dwells on how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. Sodom and Gomorrah is also an unforgiving analysis of both the decadent high society of Paris and the rise of a philistine bourgeoisie that is on the way to supplanting it. Characters who had lesser roles earlier on now reappear in a different light and take centre stage, notably Albertine, with whom the narrator believes he is in love, and the insanely haughty Baron de Charlus.

‘Proust redefined the terms of fiction … a profound and often very witty masterpiece whose influence continues to pervade the body politic of imaginative prose’ 
Robert McCrum, Guardian Favourite Books of the Twentieth Century

The Prisoner and The Fugitive fulfill Swann’s much earlier warning to Marcel: ‘Though the subjection of the woman may briefly allay the jealousy of the man, it eventually makes it even more demanding’, as Marcel and Albertine are locked in a cycle of mistrust that threatens both their identities. But these are also novels of great lyrical excitement and beauty – in the Parisian street cries, the Vinteuil concert and Proust’s virtuoso description of Venice. Above all, these two works deal with the theme of the explosion and impact of memory that runs throughout In Search of Lost Time, pointing the reader towards its resolution.

‘Sublime… Proust’s great opus… In Proust’s interweave of romantic delusions, the glory of the descriptions, as the narrator strives to recapture the past, redeems everyone’ 
John Updike

In Finding Time Again, Marcel discovers his world destroyed by war and those he knew transformed by the march of time. A superb picture of France in the throes of the First World War, and containing in the Bal des Têtes sequence one of Proust’s most devastating set-pieces, Finding Time Again triumphantly describes the paradox of facing mortality yet overcoming it through the act of writing. As Marcel rediscovers his vocation, he realizes that he can live on by writing down the story of his own memories and of his search to recapture the past.

Marcel Proust was long the object of a cult in which the main point of reading his great novel "In Search of Lost Time" was to find, with its narrator, a redemptive epiphany in a pastry and a cup of lime-blossom tea. We now live in less confident times, in ways that place great strain on the assumptions and beliefs that made those earlier readings possible. This has led to a new manner of reading Proust, against the grain. In "Mirages and Mad Beliefs," Christopher Prendergast argues the case differently, with the grain, on the basis that Proust himself was prey to self-doubt and found numerous, if indirect, ways of letting us know. Prendergast traces in detail the locations and forms of a quietly nondogmatic yet insistently skeptical voice that questions the redemptive aesthetic the novel is so often taken to celebrate, bringing the reader to wonder whether that aesthetic is but another instance of the mirage or the mad belief that, in other guises, figures prominently in "In Search of Lost Time." In tracing the modalities of this self-pressuring voice, Prendergast ranges far and wide, across a multiplicity of ideas, themes, sources, and stylistic registers in Proust's literary thought and writing practice, attentive at every point to inflections of detail, in a sustained account of Proust the skeptic for the contemporary reader.

"In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower" is Proustas spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narratoras memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the story lie his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower" has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup. It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures who for better or worse are to dominate the narratoras lifeathe Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.

The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire on a time, place and culture, The Guermantes Way is in the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world.

This volume of essays, written by scholars from a wide range of critical and theoretical viewpoints, presents a fresh approach to the study of nineteenth-century French poetry. Each of the eleven essays, on different poets from Lamartine to Mallarme and Laforgue, focuses on the detailed organisation of a single poem. The method of close reading has been adopted in order to effect an introduction to the analysis of the 'basics' of poetic language (sound, metre, syntax, etc.), and in order to explore and illustrate some of the claims and arguments about poetry arising from developments in the prevailing literary theory. Theoretical positions are posed and tested in the terms of practical analysis and interpretation. Christopher Prendergast's introduction to the volume situates the essays in a series of general perspectives and contexts, and Clive Scott has provided an appendix on French versification.