FRAGMENT ROMANESQUE D’UNE HISTOIRE DE LA CRITIQUE : le Swann de Paul de Man

Abstract

Typical structuralist and deconstructionist features, such as technical textualism, are obvious in Paul de Man’s « Reading (Proust) ». Rhetorical categories are favored almost exclusively over existential ones, which he used before nevertheless and which are at stake in Swann’s Way. Through a process of contextualization of the critical text, this paper highlights its underlying existential matters, in relation to Proust’s own description of reading and allegory.