The Modern World: Ten Great Writers — Season 1, Episode 4: Marcel Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu

Episode synopsis

Withdrawing from the glittering high society he had so avidly courted, Marcel Proust spent the last decade of his life in virtual isolation, writing and revising Remembrance of Things Past. This program focuses on an intriguing dramatization of part seven of Proust’s magnum opus, in which narrator Marcel attends a reception for the new Princesse de Guermantes and discovers his life’s true vocation in the process. Professor Michel Butor, of Geneva University, and translator Terence Kilmartin add keen insights into the novel’s philosophical exploration of time, memory, and individual creativity.

About The Modern World: Ten Great Writers

This documentary series uses drama and commentary to shed light on the lives and works of Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T. S. Eliot, Henrik Ibsen, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Luigi Pirandello, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf.

More episodes from Season 1

• E1James Joyce: Ulysses
• E2Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
• E3Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'
• E5Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain
• E6Henrik Ibsen: The Master Playwright
• E7Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
• E8Luigi Pirandello: In Search of an Author
• E9T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land
• E10Franz Kafka: The Trial
• E11Ten Great Writers: The Seminar