L’étincelle joyeuse et motrice della lettura: dimensione motrice e interpretazione del senso nella Recherche di Proust

Through three examples taken from Proust’s Recherche, we focus on how writing activates the recipient’s kinesics and perceptual intelligence, stimulating the knowledge process which is inherent in reading. The first example concerns the reader’s decoding of the ironic range in Proust’s social depiction, starting from metaphors concerning the semantic field of the body. The second one shows how emotional involvement is proposed to the reader, which is invited to simulate the sensorial alterations conveyed by rhetorical figures; finally, it is shown that it is precisely the perceptual alteration on which the Proustian metaphor is built that makes the recipient perform the “cognitive movement” underlying the stylistic project of the Recherche.