Proust recalled: A psychological revisiting of that madeleine memory moment

Abstract

Marcel Proust’s reflective autobiographical novel A la Recherche du Temps Perdu1 (1913–1927) contains one of the most iconic descriptions of ‘involuntary memory’, or cued recall, in literature. Proust famously relates how vivid memories of his childhood home and surroundings are invoked after sipping a spoonful of tea mixed with soaked crumbs of a ‘petite madeleine’, a sweet buttery French cake, that his mother had provided one cold winter’s day. He recalls that, when visiting his invalid Aunt Léonie in her bedroom on Sunday mornings, she would offer him a madeleine soaked in tea. This memory, seemingly invoked by tasting the same tea-soaked madeleine combination, then brings forth a flood of remembered sights and sounds from his childhood.