Antoine Compagnon examines the immense powers attributed to literature - powers that seem to have been challenged by modernity. What value can literature still have in contemporary society and culture?
What is literature for?
"Taking the floor in these parts, a trouble seizes me, for I see myself again the first time I crossed the doors of this house - to meet giants." A sonnet by Du Bellay commented by Jakobson: such was Antoine Compagnon's first encounter with the Collège de France, evoked in the opening lecture he delivered on November 30, 2006.
An engineer who became Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York and at the Sorbonne, Antoine Compagnon was appointed Professor at the Collège de France in 2006, holding a chair entitled "Modern and Contemporary French Literature: History, Criticism, Theory".
He is the author of numerous books, including Le Démon de la théorie : littérature et sens commun (1998), Baudelaire devant l'innombrable, (2003), Les Antimodernes, de Joseph de Maistre à Roland Barthes (2005), and several critical editions of Proust.
