Stephen Bann is Professor and Director of the Centre for Modern Cultural Studies at the University of Kent, where he has taught since 1967- He has taken an active part in the translation and dissemination of contemporary French writing over the past quarter century. His own books include The Clothing of Clio ( 1984 ), The True Vine ( 1989 ) and The Inventions of History (1990). Julia Kristeva's Eliot Lectures on Proust mark an important stage in her career, as a critic, writer and theoretician. Proust has been one of her major interests, as a teacher, over the past few years. This book shows beyond doubt that she regards him as the major French writer of the present century. Indeed, Proust is shown to anticipate to a remarkable degree the preoccupations of a contemporary audience. He opens up a dimension of embodied time which sustains and nourishes the human psyche in its present predicament. Kristeva does not reject Previous Proust criticism. On the contrary, she Builds on much of the best that has been written in recent year's, notably the work of Gerard Genette, Gilles Deleuze and Rene Girard. She also uses material from the archival study of Proust's manuscripts, and historical accounts of his own philosophical sources.