The Presence of Touch in Musset’s André del Sarto and Proust’s Le Mystérieux Correspondant

Touch, as a sense of proximity, is very important in emotional and intellectual communication. Is it possible to insert it in literature? By analysing lexical-semantic networks of terms related to the sense of touch in two nineteenth-century literary works—a play by Musset and a tale by Proust—this paper aims to explain the preeminent narrative role that these two young authors accord the sense of touch.