Proust for Historians

This essay deals with the relationship between the writer Proust and the work of the historian. It explains why Proust's great novel, À la recherche du temps perdu, should be of interest to historians and discusses his historical sensibility as a literary artist, his portrayal of French society and its changes during the era of the Third Republic up to the years after the first World War, and his observations on anti-Semitism and homosexuality in France at this period. The essay stresses the preoccupation with time and memory which Proust shares with the historian and discusses the points of contact and difference between the two in their view of memory and their efforts to recover and understand the past.