frlit1-9, Exercise 1: Involuntary memory

Model answer:

Proust's central idea is that real memory is not deliberate recall but involuntary: it arrives suddenly through a taste, a smell or a sound and brings back the past more fully than effort can. The madeleine scene is famous because the taste of a small cake dipped in tea brings back the narrator's whole forgotten childhood, and the madeleine has become a general symbol for any trigger of memory.

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