Antoine Compagnon

Course

1975-1978 : boarder of the Foundation Thiers, attached of research to CNRS, linguistics and literature Frenchwomen.
1978-1985: university lecturer, Polytechnic school, department humanities and social sciences.
1980-1981: professor, French Institute of the United Kingdom, London.
1981-1985: lecturer, then university lecturer, University of High-Normandy, Rouen.
Since 1985: French professor, University Columbia, New York.
1986: Visiting Professor, University off Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
1988: Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Memorial.
1989-1990: professor, University of Maine, Mans.
1990: Visiting Professor, University off Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Since 1991: White W. Knopf Professor off French and Comparative Literature, University Columbia, New York.
1994: Visiting Fellow, Al Drunk persons College, Oxford.
Since 1994: professor, University of Paris Sorbonne.
Since April 2006: professor, Collège de France, pulpit of “modern and contemporary French Literature: history, critical, theory”

Other functions and distinctions

Officer of the academic Palms
Fellow, American Academy off Arts and Sciences
Member, Academia Europaea
General secretary of the International association of the French studies (AIEF)
President of Association for the quality of French science (QSF)
Member elected of the CNU (National council of the universities), 9th section, 1999-2003
Member elected of the CNESER (National council of higher education and research), 2002--
Member of the CSE (Superior council of education), 2003--
Member of the Scientific advice of the University of Paris-Sorbonne, 2005-2006
Member of the High council of education, 2006--

Works

Fiction

former Mourning , novel, Threshold, coll Fiction and Co, 1979.
Ferragosto , account, Flammarion, 1985: “That does remain passion in the erotism, the division with three, the jealousy? A modern couple seeks the answer in the middle of the sensual festivals which carries out it city downtown. ”

Tests

the Second hand or the work of the quotation , Threshold, 1979: “We make only us entregloser. " No doubt Montaigne deplored it but initially it took note of it, as well as the Essais testify some: any word pays, the writing is glose and entreglose. All is known as: such is the law of the language, the condition of the speech. But it is various methods of the repetition of already known as. One of them, most obvious, gives to this book its departure and its horizon: the quotation, not the quotation in oneself but the work of the quotation, the recovery or the second hand, and the following ones. Solidarity of a fact of language and an instituted practice, the quotation is an act, a form and a function. The act orders a phenomenology which locates it in the reading and the writing; the form, a semiology which appreciates its mode to make direction in the text; the function, a genealogy which counts some of its well detached historical values. Such are the major options of a work of the quotation rather than on the quotation: it is it which discourses and ramble because it is not an object but an obsession that these pages, any writing, dream to demolish. ” (information. editor).

Us, Michel de Montaigne , Threshold, 1980.

the Third Republic of the Letters , Threshold, 1983: “There is not thirty-six way of speaking literature, but two: one historical, the other formal one. At least here nearly two centuries that we balance between them. However, the formalisms with the capacity for twenty years have given signs of tiredness. How to leave itself there without turning over stupidly behind, with the literary history of our aïeux, these barbichets which was the doctors of the State, fathers of the republic? By asking how we came from there there; that was this discipline against which years 1960 rose and by which compromises it was instituted; how it was at the same time politically progressist and intellectually reactionary; why, finally, l'" agitation moderniste" of before 14 sclerosed itself at any speed. Here thus little story of a crisis: 1870-1914, businesses between two wars, the foundation of the radical University, and the passage of the " hurdy-gurdy hurdy-gurdy critique" (Holy-Beuve, Taine, Brunetière) with the literary history (Lanson and its clicks). More one thought for the reverses of the Third of the letters: Proust and Flaubert, of manner of reprimand to a literary history which always remained in front of the literature as a hen which has a knife. ” (information. editor)

Proust between two centuries , Threshold, 1989.

Five Paradoxes of modernity , Threshold, 1990: “At the beginning of the XIXe Hegel century judged that the glory of art was behind him, in the past, and he announced anything less than the end of Article Is for this purpose, always differed since nearly two hundred years, than we assist today? This rather with the bankruptcy of the doctrines would not be which wanted " expliquer" art thus to assign a " to him; but" and to think its history in terms of " progrès"? Such are the questions which are in the middle of the Five paradoxes of modernity. And if there are precisely five of them, it is that, since Baudelaire, the history of art underwent five major crises corresponding to as many unsolved contradictions. The readers who are unaware of the rudiments of the recent history of the fine arts will find there a guide sure. The others will find there a prospect original (baudelairienne) suitable to clarify the current sudden starts of the " postmodernité". ” (information. editor)

Cat out of pocket: Montaigne and the allegory , Threshold, 1993.

do you Know Brunetière? , Threshold, 1997.

the Demon of the theory , Threshold, 1998: “After the time of criticism and the literary history, came time from the literary theory, or rather from the literary theories, which took turns and faced during these forty last years. They agree nevertheless on the refusal of any psychology, a certain formalism, and initially on the will to refute the common direction, the ideas " populaires" on the literature: the author like authority giving his direction to the text; the world like subject and matter of work; reading included/understood like conversation between the author and the reader; style like choice in a manner of writing; literary history like majestic procession of the great writers; the value like property objectifies literary gun. The theory shook these reference marks of the common direction, but the common direction resisted the theory. And this one often had to force the note to reduce its adversary to silence, with the risk to be locked up in paradoxes. It is the combat of the theory and the common direction which this book recalls, without limiting itself to the French field. Time indeed had just evaluated our happy new years of literary theory in order to suggest a first assessment of it. ” (information. editor)

Baudelaire in front of innumerable the , PUPS, 2003: “Michel Leiris qualified the Flowers of the evil d'" irréductibles". Work resists any reading. To respect it, it is necessary to be freed from the myths which surround it since one century and half. It is the object of the first chapter. Thus one will be brought back to the poems, with their irremediable letter. Beyond, four chapters examine the recurrence of a topic the eternal, the infinite one, the sea, the street - four alternatives of an obsession of the poet: the number. " All is number. The number is in all. The number is in the individual. Intoxication is a nombre" , one in Fusées reads. The number: on a side the order, the doctrines pythagorician giving access to the rules of the universe; other the discord, malicious sea, the busy street. Or worms, " rhyme and nombre" , as Baudelaire defines it: rate/rhythm, gives rhythm, harmony, but also overflow, disproportion, dissonance. Two chapters renew finally time and the allegory, other obsessions related to the number (" - Ah! never not to leave the Numbers and the Beings! "), with the forms which carry them: the syncope and nonthe sequitur which breaks the worms of the Fleurs of the evil . ” (information. editor)

Antimodernes, of Joseph de Maistre with Roland Barthes , Gallimard, 2005, price Pierre-Georges Castex of the Academy of Science morals and political, price of the criticism of the French Academy: “Which is the antimodernes? Not the conservatives, the academic ones, the sensitive to the cold ones, the firemen, the reactionaries, but the modern ones with back-plate, in spite of them, to their defending body, those which advance while looking in the rear view mirror, as Sartre said of Baudelaire. This book continues the seam of resistance to the modernity which crosses all the modernity and which in some manner defines it, by distinguishing it from a naive modernism, zealot of progress. A first part explores some broad topics characteristic of the current antimoderne with XIXe and XXe centuries. These obsessions are six: history, the counter-revolution; philosophical, anti-Lights; morals, pessimism; nun, the original sin; esthetics, sublimates it; and stylistics, vituperation. Joseph de Maistre, Chateaubriant, Baudelaire, Flaubert on a side, other Proust, Caillois or Cioran are used to release these ideal features. One second part examines some great figures antimodernes with XIXe and XXe centuries or, rather, some major configurations antimodernes: Lacordaire and the group of the Future around 1830; Leon Bloy polemizing. with the anti-semitism about 1892; Péguy and medium of the Books of the fortnight before 1914; Albert Thibaudet and Julien Benda, intellectual guides of the NRF of Paulhan enters the two wars; Julien Gracq in delicacy with surrealism; finally, Roland Barthes, " with the rear-guard of before-garde" , as he liked to be located. Between the topics and the figures, variations appear, but the antimodernes were the salt of modernity, its reverse or its fold, its reserve and its resource. Without the antimoderne, the modern one ran to its loss, because the antimodernes gave freedom to modern, they were the modern ones plus freedom. ” (information. editor)

Antoine Compagnon published side from Swann de Proust in the collection “Folio” (Gallimard, 1988), Sodome and Gomorrhe in the “Pleiad” and “Folio” (Gallimard, 1988 and 1989), as well as the Carnets of Proust (Gallimard, 2002). Its edition of the Réflexions on the policy of Albert Thibaudet is under press (Laffont, “Books”, 2007).

He is member of the editorial board of: Critical, The Romanic Review, Bulletin of the Company of the friends of Montaigne, The French Review, French Studies, Genesis, Cambridge Studies in French, Technè, the Baudelaire Year, Labyrinth, Re-examined literary history of France, Books of the Judaism .

External bonds

Theory of the literature, course on line of Antoine Compagnon: “What an author? ”, “concept of kind”, “intertextuality”.
Course at the Collège de France in audio format
an exclusive interview with Alexandre Prstojevic, for the review Vox Poetica .
Discussion with Jean-Paul Enthoven

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