The Subjective Transformation Of Reality: A Comparative Analysis Of The Surrealist Elements In Proust's à La Recherche Du Temps Perdu And Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time

Marcel Proust is a famous French novelist in the 20 th century.His works "à la Recherche du Temps Perdu." takes the form of an autobiographical novel.At the same time,it represents a pioneering work of stream-of-consciousness literature,and trying to apply Bergson's intuitive subconscious theory to the novel's creative process;Anthony Powell is a famous British novelist in the 20 th century,and he is also known as "The Proust of England".His autobiographical novel "A Dance to the Music of Time" is a masterpiece honored with special status outstanding from the works of the same period.It depicts the social change in the upper British society in a detached tone.The narrative styles of both novels share a very strong and personally reminiscent characteristic.The two novels together depict the inner-journey of self-cognition,and,at the same time,they pay more attention to expressing the subjective world and inner feeling while presenting the objective world."Memory" and "self-consciousness" are the carriers of the deep search and excavation of the inner world by the two novels.Two works endow "death","Time","Love" and other issues with deep thinking,infusing more heartfelt feeling into reality.Through the expression of "recollection","Desire" and "self-consciousness",both authors have successfully broken the bondage of time and space,constructing the idealized narrative system and the spiritual haven transcending the phenomenal reality,while realizing the subjective transformation of the objective world.In this category,both works demonstrate compatibility with surrealism in their respective narrative features.Surrealism represents a modern western literary school of thoughts.Spanning the duration of the two world wars,surrealism has prevailed in Europe and achieved the most profound impact in the field of visual Arts.It is committed to exploring the subconscious psychology of human beings,advocating breaking free of the realistic view of logic and reality,completely abandoning the realistic image based on logic and orderly experience and memory,and combining the concept of reality with the experience of instinct,subconsciousness,and dream,to reflect the deep psychology of human beings onto the imagery world.Surrealist believes that the real world is shackled by reason,and many people's instincts and desires are repressed.The only way that can really show the truth of people's psychology and the true nature that is beyond the reality of the absolute is through surrealist ideas,to release the deep psychology or dream of people towards the other side of the world,that is,the surreal world.The purpose of surrealism is to let reality return to the primordial mode.It denies the role of reason and emphasizes people's subconscious or unconscious activities.The intuition of the French subjective idealism philosopher Bergson,the French philosopher Deleuze,and the Austrian spiritual pathologist Freud's psychoanalysis have laid the philosophical theoretical foundation of surrealism.Through the analysis of "à la Recherche du Temps Perdu" by Marcel Proust and "Dance to the Music of Time" by Anthony Powell,this paper highlights the characteristics of surrealism's capacity of "subjective transformation of the objective world".Taking the four dimensions of surrealism as logical lineage,this thesis transitions itself from "signs and memory","Desire","Time",and "dialectical image".Facilitated by different literary theories,the thesis unfolds the formation system of Surrealism.The first chapter of this paper constructs of the theoretical foundation for the entire thesis,conducting the overall analysis of the four dimensions of surrealism and bringing it into the literary context,to lay the basic context of the full text.In the second chapter,this paper focuses on the commonalities of how the two novels reflect surrealism in the aspects of "signs”,“memory",and "desire".It discusses the "signs” and "memory" of surrealism,probing into the relationship between the characters of two works and symbols in the field of reality,and the capture of memory by two works,and emphatically analyzing the roles of homologous "desire" in two texts in the context of surrealism,as well as "love instinct" and "death instinct".In the third chapter,this paper focuses on the differences between the two works in the realm of "time frame" and "dialectical image",juxtaposing the two surrealist ways of presentation.It compares and analyzes the surrealist effects of the two works in the time dimension,and it then emphatically compares the temporal differences between them on the level of narrative style.At a deeper level,this paper focuses on the distorted time view existing in two works,and it elaborates on the different shaping methods of the images in two works,and finally it explains the sensory and philosophical significance of "image" in two works.In the conclusion part,this paper tries to elucidate the point that the greatest commonality between Proust and Powell lies in the fact that they regard literary and artistic creation as the spontaneous psychological process of pure individuals,and through the way of surrealist writing,they greatly release the infinite possibility of living world,breaking the barrier of consciousness and self-consciousness.In the existing boundary of life,they manage capturing a more sincere and broad feeling.However,due to the different historical backgrounds and the differences between British and French culture,the works of the two writers share nuances from each other,Proust is more inclined to use the inherent vitality contained in the details of life that is already established by the tradition,he aims at the release of the "surreal" characteristics existing in reality,whereas Powell occupies a transcendental perspective of life that rises above the surreal realm.The latter of who is able to resolve the conflict between dreams and reality,to reach an absolute,and to transcendental true realm.