Abstract
Paul Valéry's conception of great art is particularly elitist :" Ce que tout le monde peut faire est exclu de la poétique " (12 décembre 1941). It also presupposes a biological view of history, with progress and decadence, and is formalist : great art is a " pure form ", whose perfection would have been reached at the end of the 19th century.
Since Valéry, this idea of literature as a form has been challenged : this paradigm shift, among other things, is the subject of our book L'Adieu à la littérature (2005).Rather, the 21st century is the moment of the democratic or political age of literature. Literature is seen as the voice of communities, as a political representation of the diversity of the social body, as an expression in which everyone can find a voice. We speak and write in the name of a class, a group. Literature is asked to be useful, to bring consolation, to repair the world, as Alexandre Gefen points out.
In 1966, Adorno highlighted the stages of this change, asserting that art must " something that is heterogeneous to it ". In contrast to Valéry's pure form, the work of impurity and the desire for permanent hybridity came to the fore.
Yet it was during his lifetime that Valéry's vision was challenged. Valéry's popularity coincided with the popularity of the formal paradigm of literature (or with nostalgia for this formal paradigm).
