commune
A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to:
Administrative-territorial entities
* Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township
** Communes of ...
in the
Eure-et-Loir
Eure-et-Loir (, locally: ) is a French department, named after the Eure and Loir rivers. It is located in the region of Centre-Val de Loire. In 2019, Eure-et-Loir had a population of 431,575.department
Department may refer to:
* Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility
Government and military
*Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...
in north central
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
.
Population
Literature
''Combray'' was the writer
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
's name for the village of Illiers (near the Cathedral town of
Chartres
Chartres () is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 170,763 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Chartres (as d ...
), vividly depicted by him in the opening chapters of his vast semi-autobiographical novel ''
In Search of Lost Time
''In Search of Lost Time'' (french: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French ...
''.
The home of Proust's "Aunt Léonie" in the heart of the village, where he spent much of his childhood, has been transformed into a museum to the writer's memory. It provides visitors with a delightful view of 19th-century provincial life as well as of the many Proustian mementos on display.
It should be added that Proust scholars have recently claimed his descriptions of "Combray" owe as much to the author's stays in his uncle's home in
Auteuil Auteuil may refer to:
Places
* Auteuil, Oise, a commune in France
* Auteuil, Paris, a neighborhood of Paris
** Auteuil, Seine, the former commune which was on the outskirts of Paris
* Auteuil, Quebec, a former city that is now a district within ...
, near
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, as to Illiers-Combray.
As a tribute to Proust's literary masterpiece, the people of Illiers decided, in 1971, to change the town's name to ''Illiers-Combray'', on the occasion of the centenary of the author's birth.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and politi ...
. Ruskin's work was a source of inspiration to Proust.