MARCEL PROUST'S LITERARY PLACES

Proustian geography is an entirely psychological, even entirely subjective and impressionistic geography”, wrote André Ferré in one of the first essays dedicated to Marcel Proust’s places (Ferré, 1939: 20). Indeed, visiting the places linked to Proust’s biography does not precisely correspond to visiting the emblematic places of the Recherche du temps perdu. Between life and writing, a transmutation has taken place that is both geographical and linguistic: for instance, the village of Combray is not only the topographical correspondent of Illiers but an artificialization of the reconstituted place (the childhood home of Marcel, the Recherche’s protagonist and narrator), conceived as a footbridge to the territory to be discovered (Bonniot-Mirloup & Blasquet, 2016). Just like Balbec, which groups various places on the Normandy coast around Cabourg, without completely identifying with the local geography