In an age of authorless, contextless, deconstructed texts, Francis-Noël Thomas argues that it is time to re-examine a fundamental but neglected concept of literature: writing is an action whose agent is an individual. Addressing both general readers and scholars, Thomas offers two cases, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan and Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, read against the background of the authors' large, eccentric, and surprisingly similar claims about their texts as acts. He examines what happens when we take these claims seriously enough to find out why the authors made them in the first place and what bearing they have on the texts themselves.Originally published in 1993.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Ch. 1 The Writer Writing 3

Ch. 2 'Intentions' and 'Purposes' 19

Interpretation and Actions 19

Intention and Historical Interpretation 27

Purpose and Literary Art 36

Ch. 3 'Parody' or the Imitation of Disciplines 46

Ch. 4 Explanations 57

"Scientific" Explanation 59

"Processive" Explanation 63

Ch. 5 Bernard Shaw: Historical Explanation 72

"A Frankly Doctrinal Theatre" 72

G.B.S. 75

G.B.S. in the Theater 79

G.B.S. as Historian 83

Saint Joan: The Argument and Function of the Preface 86

The Scope of the Play 91

The Play of Saint Joan: Structure and Mechanism 93

The Epilogue 102

Ch. 6 Marcel Proust: Psychological Explanation 104

The Book and the Man 104

"Psychology in Space and Time" 110

The Syllabus of Errors 113

The Triumph of the Will 121

The Historical Author, the Narrator, and Their Books 126

Ch. 7 Historical Interpretation: The Face of the Muse and the Baker's Daughter 133

Notes 155

Index 175