InProust and Emotion, Inge Crosman Wimmers proposes a new approach toA la recherche du temps perduthat centres on the role of affect. Through close reading of the hero-narrator's personal history, the author shows how emotional paradigms (especially separation anxiety), involuntary memory, and other compelling impressions give focus and structure to Proust's novel. Drawing on reader-oriented and emotion theories, she shows how affect commands the attention of the 'motivated reader' and is crucial to the process of self-understanding for both the narrator and the reader. This is the first extensive study in English to take fully into consideration the drafts (esquisses) published in the new Pléiade edition of the novel, the Mauriac edition ofAlbertine disparue, and material from the unpublished Proust manuscripts - all of which shed further light on the importance of affect inA la recherche.Proust and Emotionwill appeal to readers interested in an approach to Proust that combines insights from philosophy, psychology, and literary aesthetics and in a poetics of reading that pays particular attention to emotion.