Though In Search of Lost Time is saturated with details of French bourgeois and aristocratic life at the turn of the century, it retains its freshness for readers today because Proust’s concerns—the meaning of love and time, as understood through an individual’s memories—are always relevant. The novel is encyclopedic: its chief themes include the genesis of erotic attachment and jealousy, the growth of wisdom, and the dawning of artistic consciousness. What sets Proust’s work apart, however, is not his subject matter but his way of treating it. The unnamed first-person narrator’s story is laced with digressive explorations of the feelings and thoughts underlying even the smallest actions.