What is the madeleine’s connection to Marcel Proust’s masterwork, In Search of Lost Time?
The word madeleine, with “reference or allusion to Proust’s use”, has come to mean “something that strongly evokes memories or nostalgia”. (Oxford English Dictionary) This use first occurred in print in 1939, and continues to the present day. (Oxford English Dictionary) In the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way, the narrator famously dips a madeleine in his tea. The taste evokes a gripping, brief memory that he struggles to place. With effort he identifies it in his childhood: And suddenly the memory appeared. That taste was the taste of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray […], my aunt Léonie would give me after dipping it in her infusion of tea or lime blossom.” (Proust 47) This instance of “involuntary memory”, the idea that sensory perceptions can evoke powerful memories, is the most widely known episode in the novel. Proust explores this theory of memory throughout his novel; the theme eventually culminates in the final volu
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