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Hello Marcel Proust's novel, Al-Eresse de Tompedieu, or in search of lost time has been called the definitive modern novel.

His stylistic innovation, sensory exploration and fascination with memory were to influence

a whole body of thinkers from the German intellectuals of the 1930s

to the Blooms reset, chief among them of Ginny Wolf, and innumerable critics and novelists since.

But how did he succeed in creating a 3,000 page novel with such an artistic coherence?

To what extent did John Ruskin influence Proust?

Is his fascination with memory and recall simply a nostalgia for the past and what impact did he have on the

20th century novel.

With me to discuss Proust are Jacqueline Rose, Professor of English Literature at Queen

Mary University London, an author of Albertine, a novel based on a

rewriting of Proust's Central Female Character, Marken Bowie, Master of Christ College Cambridge,

and author of Proust Among the Stars, and Dr Robert Fraser, Senior Research Fellow in the

Literature Department at the Open University and author of Proust and the Victorians.

Jack Lindros, why can in search of lost time be seen as the definitive modern novel?

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