The 1960s and 1970s represent the foundational era of French structuralist narratology, a period during which Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) was elevated to the status of a paradigmatic text for theoretical inquiry. While Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse (1972) has achieved undisputed canonical status for its systematic and transposable framework, this very ascendancy has, over time, obscured the pioneering and profoundly insightful work of Marcel Muller. At the heart of his schema lies the pivotal and ingenious concept of the “intermediate subject” (sujet intermédiaire), a narrative instance that acts as a crucial relay between the experiencing Hero and the ultimate, artistically transformed Narrator. This paper argues for a thorough reassessment and recuperation of Muller’s contribution, positing that his model, far from being a mere historical precursor supplanted by Genette, offers a uniquely nuanced, textually-grounded, and phenomenologically rich lens for understanding the ontological ambiguity, unstable chronology, and layered enunciation that are constitutive of Proust’s narrative genius. Muller’s work moves decisively beyond the “simple binarism” of the narrating and narrated “I” and prefigures later theoretical concerns with the gradience and distribution of fictional consciousness. This paper seeks to restore Muller’s study to its rightful place as an indispensable, vibrant, and still-challenging work within both Proustian scholarship and the broader field of narrative theory.
