A biographical note on Marcel Proust's Professor Cottard

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.