A biographical note on Marcel Proust's Professor Cottard
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John Pearn1, Christopher Gardner-Thorpe
1Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia. j.pearn@mailbox.uq.edu.au
Abstract:
A medical practitioner, Professor Cottard, features in Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, which has been described as one of the supreme achievements of world literature. Proust modelled the character of Cottard on the real-life Parisian neurologist and psychiatrist Dr Jules Cotard (1840-1889). Marcel Proust's father, Dr Adrien Proust, was an eminent Parisian surgeon and a contemporary of Cotard. A review of the biographical literature (in French) relating to Dr Jules Cotard and an analysis of his published work (in English and French) have revealed a striking parallelism between the lives of the fictional Cottard and Jules Cotard.
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