Abstract

Recognizing yourself in literature can not only help you to get a clearer grasp of what you already think and feel. It can also deeply unsettle your vision of yourself. This article examines a hitherto neglected mechanism to this effect: learning by way of seeing yourself in others’ blindness. I show that In Search of Lost Time epitomizes this phenomenon. Confronting characters oblivious to their old age makes the protagonist realize that he, too, has aged without noticing it, and invites readers to analogous insights. The paper contributes to the discussion on how you can learn from literature and adds a twist to Marcel Proust’s claim that the purpose of literature is that readers recognize themselves in it.

摘要

在文学中认识自己不仅可以帮助您更清楚地了解自己的想法和感受。它也会深深地扰乱你对自己的看法。本文研究了一种迄今为止被忽视的机制：通过在别人的盲目中看到自己的方式来学习。我表明寻找失落的时间是这种现象的缩影。面对对自己年老无知的角色，主角会意识到自己也在不知不觉中变老，并邀请读者进行类似的见解。这篇论文有助于讨论如何从文学中学习，并为马塞尔·普鲁斯特 (Marcel Proust) 的声称文学的目的是让读者在其中认识自己的说法增加了一个转折点。