French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Wada, Proust's Novelistic Creation: The Genesis of Combray
Novel and Narrative Prose
***
Akio Wada, Proust's Novelistic Creation: The Genesis of "Combray"
Paris: Honoré Champion, "Recherches proustiennes" series, 2012.
EAN 9782745323743.
208 pp.
Price: 55 EUR
Publisher's description:
For many years, Marcel Proust devoted himself to writing his monumental novel, In Search of Lost Time. The invaluable documents preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France—notebooks, pocket notebooks, typescripts, proofs, and loose sheets—constitute a core corpus that allows us to trace the turbulent history of the author's novelistic creation. The primary task of this study is to date and classify these documents to arrange them in their order of composition; the manuscripts thus require a chronological reading. The first part aims to update and refine the dating of the early typescript of "Combray," whose three layers of additions bear witness to the novel's subsequent evolution. The second part is devoted to the genesis of the episodes, characters, and themes of "Combray": "Sunday afternoon," Bergotte and reading, Swann's park and the appearance of Gilberte, Roussainville and Montjouvain (the theme of Sodom), and the appearance of Mme de Guermantes. Replacing the "conversation with Maman" with the "Bal de Têtes" for the end of the work completely altered its organization; Contre Sainte-Beuve thus gave way to the novel of time. A new classification of the draft notebooks written in 1909–1911 is proposed in the conclusion.
Akio Wada is a professor of French literature at Osaka University. His dissertation, entitled "The Evolution of 'Combray' since Autumn 1909," focused on the genesis of Proust's novel in 1909–1911. Among other works, he has published the General Index of the Draft Notebooks of Marcel Proust (Osaka University, 2009), "Proust and Leconte de Lisle: Another Poet in Contre Sainte-Beuve" (Gallia, no. 47, 2008), and "Proust and the Landscape of Camille Corot" (Marcel Proust 6, Lettres Modernes Minard, 2007). He also collaborates on the edition of Cahiers 1 to 75 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Brepols).
The study of literary manuscripts and genetic criticism forms a significant branch of modern philology, focusing on the pre-textual materials left by authors. Scholars in this tradition analyze drafts, notebooks, and proofs to understand the gradual formation of a literary work. In French studies, the examination of Marcel Proust's papers preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France has long served as a central site for investigating how a major modernist text evolved through numerous revisions, layer by layer, before reaching its published form.
Akio Wada examines the textual history of In Search of Lost Time by analyzing early typescripts and draft notebooks from 1909 to 1911. The book addresses the dating of early materials, the genesis of specific episodes and characters within Combray, and the structural shift from Contre Sainte-Beuve to the novel of time. Readers interested in textual scholarship and the compositional history of Proust's work may find this volume relevant.