Le chef-d'œuvre inconnu entr'aperçu à la fin de quatre romans de l'écrivain du tournant du siècle

Marcel Proust’s novel cycle, and especially its end, can be compared with a number of great European novels that were contemporaries of the artist and the book to come: Il fuoco by Gabriele d’Annunzio (1900), Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann (1903), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, (1916 [1904-1915]). Still bearing a romantic stamp, the emergence of the creative project causes a narrative and sacrificial break.