ABSTRACT

The concept of the in-between and the metaphor of the threshold, implying the difference of two sides, eras, or spaces which they both separate and link, have become recurrent in Proust studies. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses one of the most conspicuous sources of the novel's inner tensions, the narrator's twofold perception, which at one moment makes the world appear simple and straightforward in its structure and truth, and then shows it as hopelessly multiple and ungraspable at all levels. Despite their different perspectives and contexts, both Schellingian Identity and poststructuralist Difference seek finally to express the same insight into the immanence of essence and appearance, being and becoming, the one and the many. When associating literary texts with philosophical conceptions, one risks making the former appear to be hardly more than illustrations of the latter.