Similes introduced by comme in À la recherche du temps perdu. A stylistic study

Abstract

This study analyses the specificities and the aesthetic-stylistic function of similes introduced by the connecting word like in Marcel Proust’s work. Proust scholars have never methodically examined simile, even though it occurs very often (more than two thousand times) throughout the Recherche. On the one hand, this absence can be explained with the little attention paid to simile, considered less important than metaphor in the collective rhetorical, linguistic and literary discourse. On the other hand, Proust considers metaphor the base of artwork and of style, and he does not bring up other figures in his aesthetic theory, even if these contribute to create his writing. Some critics remarked that the meaning of metaphore in Proust’s aesthetic idiolect includes other analogy figures, but this would not explain neither the extent of Proust’s preference, nor how it could be assimilated in a literary creation grounded on metaphor. Our study is organized as follows: first, we delve into simile’s linguistic and rhetoric features, its stylistic specificities compared to metaphor and the complex combination of the two figures in the Proustian aesthetic theory. Secondly, we comment on a selection of examples, classified in categories based on morphosyntactic criteria (nominal or frastic nature of both elements and of the link joining them to the tertium comparationis). From this analysis, a set of recurrent features that disclose the seminal use of simile in Proust can be inferred. Thirdly, we examine the function of this figure within the wider context of Proust’s work. The analysis of intradiegetic similes highlights the figure’s structural role, a tool that strengthens the network of symmetries underpinning the Recherche’s structure. Finally, the last chapter shows how similes embody in style the recognition act of the core of the self and of reality, an act that corresponds to Proust’s artistic vision.