The Importance of a Madeleine: Aesthetic memory of everyday life as a sense of reality, via Proust

Everyday life is, by most accounts, unremarkable, gray and monotonous. Art offers us rare moments of meaning; the aesthetic experience takes us away from the mundane humdrum. Why then, do we catch ourselves looking fondly at the past? Remembering those times where nothing out of the ordinary happened, seeped in everydayness, and yet full of meaning. And why does it feel so aesthetic? This thesis aims to shed light at such mysteries by asking how and why everyday life holds such meaning and aesthetic power upon recollection. Marcel Proust puts to paper some of the most evocative and moving displays of these aesthetically salient memories and their profound effects. As such, it stands as the perfect introduction to examining, in Chapter 1, the way that recollections of everyday life could hold such power. Chapter 2 will substantiate everyday life as aesthetic, as well as the various ways it intertwines with memory. Chapter 3 will analyze the previous findings under the concept of our sense of reality, as a way to make sense of the impact these aesthetic memories have. As a result, this thesis will argue that, contrary to appearances, everyday life can be aesthetic, and that as such, its memory can convey but also constitute our sense of reality.