Literature, Theory, and Common Sense: (New French Thought) Review

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Literature, Theory, and Common Sense: (New French Thought) ReviewI have read "Le Demon de la Theorie", which is Compagnon's text in French, literally "The Demon of Theory". whose title braves the academically subversive idea, born in common sense, that theory, while important to comprehend and understand in the study of literature, lacks a method definitive to the valuable comprehension of literature itself. Simply, he opposes the idealization of literary theory as opening a "true" and "veritable" window to a text and instead, says that the comprehension of a text is found, at best, in between common sense and the presence of theoretical maneuvers.
Compagnon delineates, in an articulate manner, the development of literary theory from the 19th to the 20th century. It is a straightforward read and can clarify/act as an introduction to understanding the frequently obtuse nature between literary theory and literature.
Literature, Theory, and Common Sense: (New French Thought) Overview
In the late twentieth century, the common sense approach to literature was deemed nave. Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the author, and Hillis Miller declared that all interpretation is theoretical. In many a literature department, graduate students spent far more time on Derrida and Foucault than on Shakespeare and Milton. Despite this, common sense approaches to literature--including the belief that literature represents reality and authorial intentions matter--have resisted theory with tenacity. As a result, argues Antoine Compagnon, theorists have gone to extremes, boxed themselves into paradoxes, and distanced others from their ideas. Eloquently assessing the accomplishments and failings of literary theory, Compagnon ultimately defends the methods and goals of a theoretical commitment tempered by the wisdom of common sense.

While it constitutes an engaging introduction to recent theoretical debates, the book is organized not by school of thought but around seven central questions: literariness, the author, the world, the reader, style, history, and value. What makes a work literature? Does fiction imitate reality? Is the reader present in the text? What constitutes style? Is the context in which a work is written important to its apprehension? Are literary values universal?

As he examines how theory has wrestled these themes, Compagnon establishes not a simple middle-ground but a state of productive tension between high theory and common sense. The result is a book that will be met with both controversy and sighs of relief.


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