ABSTRACT
The dual narratological structure of À la recherche du temps perdu facilitates the juxtaposition of diverse spatio-temporal points of view on Marcel’s objects of perception; it also contributes to the superimposition of multiple images of a single one. Some research has been carried out on the magic lantern and stereoscope as models for the superimposition of past and present images in Proust’s novel. Howard Moss’s The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust (1963), Robert Fraser’s Proust and the Victorians: The Lamp of Memory (1994), and the edited collection La Lanterne magique: pratiques et mises en écriture (1997) all deal with the role of the magic lantern in Proust’s work. Frank Wegner explores the stereoscope as a model for Marcel’s perceptual endeavours in his 2004 thesis, as do Shattuck in Proust’s Binoculars (1964) and Roxanne Hanney in The Invisible Middle Term in Proust’s ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ (1990). Hanney observes that:
Superimposition is a coincidence of forms at one point in space. It involves the partial or total obscurement of one form by another version of the same form. It is thus a stratification of sorts, although the layers need not continue in depth, but rather en surface to form a global image with all of its variations taking part at once. (1990, p. 92)
