Des mots mangeables: la gelée comme synecdoque du style dans le roman proustien

Des mots mangeables : la gelée comme synecdoque du style dans le roman proustien On edible words: jelly as synecdoche of style in the Proustian novelIn aunt Léonie's room in Combray The air becomes denser and clearer, like an “industrious, crystal clear jelly". Françoise is able to carve her braised beef’s jelly as Michelangelo sculpted Carrara marble. The good, old French of the Duchesse de Guermantes and of Francoise, so evocative of them both, is only to be found now in old recipe books in which only "les gelees, le beurre, le jus et les quenelles are authentic. Besides, Marcel hopes to be able to write his book in the same way, adding what is needed to enrich his jelly. The sixteen uses of the noun “gelée” in A la Recherche du Temps perdu are not sufficient to explain the role of this image in Proust's theorization of style. It is well known that he dislikes having labels put on to his prose. The aim of this article is to analyse the narrative situations and stylistic configurations in which "la gelée" operates as a synecdoche of Proust's entire aesthetic theory as it is proposed in his novel. The concept of configuration adopted here is that proposed by Joelle Gardes in her last book on rhetoric.