The Secular Scripture and Proust

While writing the dissertation, I came across this quotation from Northrop Frye's The Secular Scripture and couldn't help but think of Proust -- indeed, one wonders if we can read theory without Proust...

The general theme of descent, we saw, was that of a growing confusion of identity and of restrictions on action. There is a break in consciousness at the beginning, with analogies to falling asleep, followed by a descent to a lower world which is sometimes a world of cruelty and imprisonment, sometimes an oracular cave. In descent there is a growing isolation and immobility: charms and spells hold one motionless; human beings are turned into subhuman creatures, and made more mechanical in behavior; hero or heroine are trapped in labyrinths or prisons. The narrative themes and images of ascent are much the same in reverse, and the chief conceptions are those of escape, remembrance, or discovery of one’s real identity, growing freedom, and the breaking of enchantment.