Objects, the Dead and Mourning in Proust, Woolf, and Tomasi di Lampedusa

In Search of Lost Time, The Years, and The Leopard, objects become part of an eclectic constellation of meanings. These meanings are as much material as they are symbolic, insofar as they are related to death and the end of a world. From objects as symbolic referents of the dead to "chosifications" of the dead to "objets-images", the objects are also expressions of remorse, fetish objects, and things destined to be separated by the agonizing hero until their total demystification.