One of the many aspects that make Marcel Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu" such a complex and subtle work is its engagement with metaphysical questions. The disparate nature of the narrator's experiences, hypotheses, and statements has generated a number of conflicting interpretations, based on parallels with the thought of one or another philosopher from Plato to Leibniz, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, or Deleuze. Through the analysis of the narrator's two seemingly incompatible perceptions of the world, which reveal reality to be either one or infinitely multiple, Erika...

What does it mean to write I in postmodern society, in a world in which technological advances and increased globalization have complicated notions of authenticity, origins, and selfhood? Under what circumstances and to what extent do authors lend their scriptural authority to fictional counterparts? What role does naming, or, conversely, anonymity play vis-a-vis the writing and written I? What aspects of identity are subject to (auto)fictional manipulations? And how do these complicated and multilayered narrating selves problematize the reader's engagement with the text?Seeking answers to...