Proust among the Nations: From Dreyfus to the Middle East

253 Pages·2012·3.09 MB·English

by  Jacqueline Rose

Proust among the Nations
http://avaxhome.ws/blogs/ChrisRedfield
the 2008 university of chicago
frederick ives carpenter lectures
Proust among
the Nations
From Dreyfus to the Middle East
jacqueline rose
The University of Chicago Press (cid:2) Chicago and London
jacqueline rose is Th e University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
professor of English at Th e University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
Queen Mary, University of © 2011 by Th e University of Chicago
London. She is the author All rights reserved. Published 2011.
of many books, including Printed in the United States of America
Th e Last Resistance, Th e
Question of Zion, and 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5
Albertine: A Novel.
isbn-1 3: 978-0-226-72578-9 (cloth)
isbn-1 0: 0-226-72578-2 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Rose, Jacqueline.
Proust among the nations : from Dreyfus to the
Middle East / Jacqueline Rose.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-1 3: 978-0-226-72578-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn-1 0: 0-226-72578-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Proust, Marcel, 1871– 1922—Criticism and interpreta-
tion. 2. Dreyfus, Alfred, 1859–1 935. 3. Beckett, Samuel,
1906– 1989. 4. Genet, Jean, 1910– 1986. 5. Arab- Israeli
confl ict—Literature and the confl ict. I. Title.
pq2631.r63z83645 2011
843′.912—dc23
2011019002
o Th is paper meets the requirements of ansi/n iso
z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
for Irving Rose (1925– 2009)
and for Frank Kermode (1919– 2010)

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Translations and Editions of Proust xi
Introduction 3
1 Proust among the Nations 21
2 Partition, Proust, and Palestine 62
3 Th e House of Memory 107
4 Endgame: Beckett and Genet in the Middle East 146
Notes 189
Index 225

Acknowledgments
Th is book grew out of the Frederick Ives Carpenter Lectures,
which I delivered at the University of Chicago in November
2008. My thanks to Bill Brown for the original invitation, to Jay
Schleusener for hosting the lectures, to W. J. T. Mitchell, Debbie
Nelson, and Mark Miller, to Erin Glade and Samuel Brody of
the Middle East History and Th eory Workshop, to Daniel Ben-
jamin of Yalla, and to Naomi Patschke, all of whom contrib-
uted to making my visit so intellectually valuable and enjoyable.
Th anks to Alan Th omas at the University of Chicago Press for
his encouragement and for seeing the project through to publica-
tion. A research leave award from the UK Arts and Humanities
Research Council in Spring 2010 allowed me to complete the
further research and writing of the book. Queen Mary, Univer-
sity of London, continues to off er invaluable support. I owe a
great deal to its unfl inching commitment to the humanities in
hard times. I am much indebted to Ronit Tlalim and to Moham-
med Shaheen for their expert guidance in Hebrew and Arabic,
respectively. Responsibility for any remaining errors is, of course,
my own.
A version of chapter 1 was delivered as a New York Th irtieth-
Anniversary Lecture for the London Review of Books in April
2010 and subsequently published in the paper (32:11, 10 June