La madeleine en prime time: Proust et Les Soprano

The groundbreaking TV series The Sopranos features many literary references, several of them from French authors. Among these, Proust holds a special place. Not only does Proust become an explicit “model” for its protagonist, Tony Soprano—the New Jersey mafia boss who struggles with mental health and seeks the help of a psychiatrist—but the entire sequence, if not the full episode, resembles a pastiche of La Recherche. What is Proust, described as the author of a “classic,” doing in an American “mainstream” crime TV show? And what does his presence reveal about the relationship between “high art” and “popular culture,” a notion that Proust himself objected to?.