Abstract
Much has been said about Proust as a novelist, thanks in particular to the seminal works of Maurice Bardèche, Jean-Yves Tadié and Michel Raimond. This year's lecture will offer a kind of counterpart to these critical studies, as it aims to tackle the non-fiction aspect of Proust's work, which weaves elective affinities with the essay. It does not aim to define this genre - the question has already been the subject of numerous recent works - nor to consider À la recherche du temps perdu as an essayistic novel. Rather, it is to ask why the writer should not only be considered as a novelist, but also as a philosopher, an art historian, a sociologist, a linguist, a geographer, a literary critic and so on. This means, first of all, looking at the texts written before or after La Recherche : the Contre Sainte-Beuve, of course, but also the Pastiches and mélanges, the essays and articles. In addition, the novel itself is punctuated by theoretical pieces, such as " L'adoration perpétuelle ", maxims, sentences, apophtegms, which dissertate at greater or lesser length on a moral, psychological or aesthetic issue, etc., and which, as such, can be considered " essays in the novel ". The final question that arises is that of the transition from essay to novel : La Recherche was born of the Contre Sainte-Beuve project, and this original case of metamorphosis opens up many avenues for reflection.
