ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at similes and metaphors in À la recherche which have the world of reading as their source. The chapter examines ways in which this deployment of reading as image contributes to Proust's overall treatment of literate culture. It focuses both categories of image, dealing first with similes based on the world of reading, and going on to discuss a major reading-related metaphor: that of the livre intérieur, of memory, and the remembering mind, as a book. The reader of the Proustian simile deepens his response to the anxieties of the Narrator. The metaphor of the livre intérieur is used by the Narrator in Le Temps retrouvé to communicate ideas about the literary vocation. The lynchpin of the imagistic structure the authors are discussing, of the livre intérieur as master-image in relation to society, love and art, is the figure of Swann.
