Demon of Theory. Literature and Common Sense

Antoine Compagnon (b. 1950) — a French literary scholar, professor at the Collège de France and Columbia University, author of several dozen monographs and popular science books on modernism, structuralism, and French literary figures — from Montaigne and Pascal to Proust and Colette. His «Demon of Theory» (1998),
translated into more than a dozen world languages, — is both a deep, insightful overview of the achievements and failures of a vibrant and controversial cultural movement of the second half of the 20th century, known as «literary theory», and an engaging, lively, at times ironic analysis of key issues addressed by contemporary literary studies and narratology. Compagnon groups the central problems of theory into seven conditional categories — «literature», «author», «external world», «reader», «style», «history», «value». Around each, he constructs a polemical narrative, providing a chronicle of the confrontation between radical theorists and their opponents, the so-called advocates of common sense, critically assessing both polar positions and urging his readers to adopt a skeptical view of any theory - including the theory of common sense.