Madeleine : nf A madeleine is a small cake in form of shell.
Cry like a madeleine: cry a lot, a lot.
This expression is a reference to the Bible. This tells the story of Mary, of the city of Magdala (from the Greek Magdalênê), later named Mary Magdalene. This woman was a former prostitute, who introduced herself to Jesus when she heard that he was in Magdala. She rose to his feet, spraying them with tears and perfumes, drying them with her hair as she confessed her sins to him. Jesus forgave him, and Mary Magdalene became his most faithful disciple. At the time of his resurrection, it was to her that Christ presented himself first. Today, a Madeleine or a Marie Madeleine designates a former prostitute, and a person is said to "cry like a madeleine" when it is found that her crying is excessive or not justified.
If the first appearance of this phrase seems to be with Balzac in the XNUMXth century, in the XNUMXth century, make the Madeleine meant "to affect repentance."
The expression "madeleine de Proust": A micro-event which brings back memories of youth - A minor act carrying a strong emotional charge.
This expression alludes to those small acts, small events, smells, sensations which, suddenly, bring back from the depths of our memory distant memories, often charged with emotion.
And if we label them with the appellation Madeleine de Proust, it is because, in On the side of Swann's, the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, the author Marcel Proust (1871-1922) evokes such a rise in memories. While, to warm him up, his mother makes him drink tea and eat a madeleine, the taste of it soaked in tea provokes in him an intense sensation which, after putting his memories back in order, will bring him back to an ancient time when, when he lived in Combray, her aunt Léonie made her taste a piece of madeleine soaked in her infusion.