Espace fermé, espace ouvert : Proust à la recherche du familier

Abstract

The limited space of the room acquires unique significations in Proust. The work In Search of Lost Time is built on numerous oppositions that are also expressed at the level of space: the novelist reveals how a room can be either threatening or welcoming, depending on the imagination that is invested in it. Thus, the child narrator's bedroom, benevolent, can become a torment when night falls and he has to be alone, and the hotel room, threatening and disturbing, can turn into a quiet and reassuring space thanks to the intervention of the female character, namely the grandmother. The duality of the two sides, familiar and foreign, contains an antithesis but also a complementarity which are fundamental to the initiation and experience of the future writer.