QUART | Mirroring the Queer: Rewritings of the Albertine Episode

Summary
The last twenty years have seen the emergence of many different works inspired by the character Albertine from Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu. The Proustian figure evokes a surprising intertextuality across different genres, art forms and media including a poetry pamphlet and a verse novel by Anne Carson, a play by Colin Duckworth, a musical by Richard Nelson and Ricky Ian Gordon, a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, films by Chantal Akerman and Véronique Aubouy and novels by Jacqueline Rose, Angela Carter and Hélène Cixous. This cluster of works has not been previously studied. More interestingly, it offers a case of a cross-textual character appearing in alternative fictional worlds. At the same time, it fills the gaps of the strategic Proustian underrepresentation of Albertine in two ways: it either adapts the story in different genres and media or imagines a different destiny, ontology, pre/post history of the character. Examining Albertine’s metamorphoses into other fictional characters, narratives, and sociohistorical contexts, this project aims to trace the trajectory of this exemplary character thus making an important addition to the narratological and interdisciplinary study of character. At the same time, QUART puts forward the hypothesis that the Proustian changeable and fleeting figure has been chosen by artists and writers of the Francophone and Anglophone worlds because her ungraspable plurality encapsulates the potential of a queer figure of defiance. It therefore aims at conceptualizing her as a form of resistance at the intersection of sex, gender, race and class based on the hypothesis that Albertine as a queer figure assumes the ethical act of taking the risk of one’s desire. She transforms the trauma of exclusion into a viable alternative realm, where values are distributed otherwise than according to the hegemonic order. The project therefore examines how Albertine initiates renewed and renewable understandings of queerness.
Unfold all
/
Fold all
More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101032730
Start date: 01-09-2021
End date: 31-08-2023
Total budget - Public funding: 184 707,84 Euro - 184 707,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

The last twenty years have seen the emergence of many different works inspired by the character Albertine from Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu. The Proustian figure evokes a surprising intertextuality across different genres, art forms and media including a poetry pamphlet and a verse novel by Anne Carson, a play by Colin Duckworth, a musical by Richard Nelson and Ricky Ian Gordon, a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, films by Chantal Akerman and Véronique Aubouy and novels by Jacqueline Rose, Angela Carter and Hélène Cixous. This cluster of works has not been previously studied. More interestingly, it offers a case of a cross-textual character appearing in alternative fictional worlds. At the same time, it fills the gaps of the strategic Proustian underrepresentation of Albertine in two ways: it either adapts the story in different genres and media or imagines a different destiny, ontology, pre/post history of the character. Examining Albertine’s metamorphoses into other fictional characters, narratives, and sociohistorical contexts, this project aims to trace the trajectory of this exemplary character thus making an important addition to the narratological and interdisciplinary study of character. At the same time, QUART puts forward the hypothesis that the Proustian changeable and fleeting figure has been chosen by artists and writers of the Francophone and Anglophone worlds because her ungraspable plurality encapsulates the potential of a queer figure of defiance. It therefore aims at conceptualizing her as a form of resistance at the intersection of sex, gender, race and class based on the hypothesis that Albertine as a queer figure assumes the ethical act of taking the risk of one’s desire. She transforms the trauma of exclusion into a viable alternative realm, where values are distributed otherwise than according to the hegemonic order. The project therefore examines how Albertine initiates renewed and renewable understandings of queerness.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

MSCA-IF-2020

Update Date

28-04-2024
Images
No images available.
Geographical location(s)
Structured mapping
Unfold all
/
Fold all
Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE
H2020-EU.1.3. EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
H2020-EU.1.3.2. Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
H2020-MSCA-IF-2020
MSCA-IF-2020 Individual Fellowships