Childhood as Memory, Myth and Metaphor
Proust, Beckett, and Bourgeois

Catherine Crimp

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

21 December 2012  •  204pp

ISBN: 978-1-907975-39-4 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

FrenchEnglishLife-Writing


A fascination with childhood unites the artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) and the writers Samuel Beckett (1906-89) and Marcel Proust (1871-1922). But while many commentators have traced their childhood images back to memories of lived experiences, there is more to their mythologies of childhood that waits to be explored. They invite us to move away from familiar ideas — whether psychological or biographical — about what a child can represent, and even what a child is. The haunting child figures of Bourgeois, Beckett and Proust echo each other as they show how imagining origins — for a life, for a work of art — involves paradoxes that test the limits of our forms of expression. Art meets literature, profusion meets concision, French meets English, and images of childhood reveal new insights in this encounter between three great figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture.

Catherine Crimp holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and is currently Lectrice d’anglais at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

Reviews:

  • ‘Challenging and original, this is a study that will appeal not just to specialists of these three creative figures but also to everyone interested in narrative, metaphors, and the ways in which the image of the child simultaneously enables and challenges creativity.’ — Rosemary Lloyd, French Studies 67.4, October 2013, 584-85
  • ‘The study is informed by a wide array of philosophical and theoretical points of reference and relies especially on Maurice Blanchot’s writing to make a convincing case for the importance of childhood in the oeuvres of Proust, Beckett and Bourgeois.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.4, October 2014, 504

Bibliography entry:

Crimp, Catherine, Childhood as Memory, Myth and Metaphor: Proust, Beckett, and Bourgeois (Legenda, 2012)

First footnote reference: 35 Catherine Crimp, Childhood as Memory, Myth and Metaphor: Proust, Beckett, and Bourgeois (Legenda, 2012), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Crimp, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Crimp, Catherine. 2012. Childhood as Memory, Myth and Metaphor: Proust, Beckett, and Bourgeois (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Crimp 2012: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Crimp 2012: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


This Legenda title was first published by Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge.

Routledge distributes this title on behalf on Legenda. You can search for it at their site by following this link.


Permanent link to this title: