Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative after Proust

Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative After Proust explores the uses of ekphrasis, and develops the poetics of image/text in contemporary critical and literary work. The fair discussion of the main theories on the subject is developed in subtle close readings of works by Marcel Proust extended to contemporary novels. A highly readable book that will be a precious tool for future research. * Liliane Louvel, Emeritus professor of British literature, Poitiers University, France * How do we remember? In images, or in words? In seeing, or in hearing? Leonid Bilmes's compelling, fluent and sophisticated book responds to these conjoined questions by tracing the influence of Proust on a range of writers – Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, W. G. Sebald, Ben Lerner, Ali Smith and Lydia Davis – all of whom think in what are here called ‘prose pictures’. What results is not only a fresh and elegant reading of this group of writers, but a bold new theory of the relation, in prose fiction, between remembering, looking and listening. * Peter Boxall, Professor of English, University of Sussex, UK * Leonid Bilmes’s far-reaching study of how memory’s elusive visions are captured in words takes Proust’s In Search of Lost Time as its focus. It offers illuminating readings of Nabokov, Sebald, Ben Lerner, Ali Smith and Lydia Davis, resulting in an accomplished reflection on the theory and practice of mnemonic ekphrasis. * Emily Eells, Professor at the University of Paris at Nanterre, France * This incredibly and singularly brave analysis of writings on Proust is, as I lift its last word, truly “far-seeing.” Compelling in its awareness, its energeiac espousal of critical engagement with narrational watching as hearing, the intermediality Bilmes practices seems to leave out no one we care about thinking with: Benjamin, Derrida, Blanchot, Barthes, Ricoeur, and on. Way on. * Mary Ann Caws, author of The Modern Art Cookbook, Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism, Mina Loy: Apology of Genius, USA * This incredibly and singularly brave book is, as I lift its last word, truly “far-seeing.” Compelling in its awareness, the intermediality Bilmes practices seems to leave out no one we care about thinking with: Benjamin, Derrida, Blanchot, Barthes, Ricoeur, and on. Way on. * Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor Emirita of Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, USA *