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Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur pp 105–113Cite as

Involuntary Memory and Apprenticeship to Truth: Ricoeur Re-reads Proust

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Part of the book series: Contributions to Hermeneutics ((CONT HERMEN,volume 2))

Abstract

This chapter examines Ricœur’s reading of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, which is developed in the second volume of Time and Narrative. It insists first and foremost on the corporeality of involuntary memory. Highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of Ricoeur’s interpretation, it argues that Ricoeur has not sufficiently emphasized the corporeal dimension of memory that is so crucial in Proustian descriptions, where it is primarily the body that remembers through the senses of taste, smell, touch, etc. Far from being secondary, the anchoring of memory in corporeality is essential to the sudden rediscovery of the time that was believed to be lost forever.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ricoeur (1986: 150) cites Proust (1981: 1089): “For they [my readers] will not, according to me, be my readers, but real readers of themselves, my book being nothing more than a sort of magnifying glass like those that the optician in Cambray holds out to a customer; my book, thanks to which I will provide them with the means to read themselves.”

  2. 2.

    Note that Ricoeur always uses the term “visitation”, which has an evangelical and thus religious origin – it is about the visit of Maria, pregnant with Jesus, to Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist and the recognition by Elizabeth of the Messiah in Mary’s belly! – to explain the scene in Guermantes’ library.

  3. 3.

    These are the same examples Ricoeur uses in The Course of Recognition (2005), Study 2, section 1, “Ulysses makes himself known”.

  4. 4.

    Allusion to Anne Simon’s title Proust ou le réel retrouvé (2000).

  5. 5.

    Richard Kearney’s article has been published in Portuguese in Nascimento and Salles (2013). See also Kearney’s chapter in this book.

Bibliography

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pontíficia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Jeanne Marie Gagnebin

Authors
  1. Jeanne Marie Gagnebin
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Correspondence to Jeanne Marie Gagnebin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, USA

    Scott Davidson

  2. Collège Édouard-Montpetit , Longueuil, Québec, Canada

    Marc-Antoine Vallée

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Gagnebin, J.M. (2016). Involuntary Memory and Apprenticeship to Truth: Ricoeur Re-reads Proust. In: Davidson, S., Vallée, MA. (eds) Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33426-4_8

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