Recording of a lecture delivered on November 17, 2023, by Rebecca Goldner as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Ms. Goldner describes her lecture: "In Search of Lost Time is, in a very general way, the story of a young boy growing up to become an author. This boy, the narrator of the book, is presented throughout in the first person, an 'I' who appears in different and interwoven ages and times. In this lecture, I will ask about the role of art and artists within In Search of Lost Time. In particular, I will explore what art means to the narrator by looking at music, reading, and writing in Volume I, Swann’s Way. Ultimately, I will make some suggestions about what it means to create a fictionalized 'I' as the subject of the novel and ask whether the role of art throughout the work might help us to understand some of the experiences and complexities of this subject, who ends up being both a work of art and an artist."