Antoine Compagnon discusses two recent projects that shed light on the intellectual history of XXe century. Controversies over the institutionalization of sociology or anthropology illustrate the evolution of disciplines in France ; a literary anthology places the literature of the Great War in an international framework.
Antoine Compagnon is a professor at the Collège de France where he holds the chair of modern and contemporary French literature. Historian of French literature, literary theory and criticism, he has published among others The Second Hand or the work of quotation (Threshold, 1979), We, Michel de Montaigne (Threshold, 1980), The Third Republic of Letters (Threshold, 1983), Proust between two centuries (Threshold, 1989), The Five Paradoxes of Modernity (Threshold, 1990), The Demon of Theory (Threshold, 1998). In this interview, he discusses the Passage des disciplines project that he currently directs, as well as the anthology The Great Writers’ War recently published by Gallimard.
Interview with Antoine Compagnon by laviedesidees
Shooting and editing: A. Suhamy