Antoine Compagnon
Professor of French
Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature

amc6@columbia.edu
513 Philosophy Hall
(212) 854-5528

Antoine Compagnon, Docteur ès lettres (1985), is the Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature. He studies literary representations in three main areas: Renaissance, late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, theory of literature and history of criticism. He focused on Montaigne’s Essais in La Seconde Main (1979), Nous, Michel de Montaigne (1980), Chat en poche: Montaigne et l’allégorie (1993). On Proust, after editing Du côté de chez Swann (1988) and Sodome et Gomorrhe (1988), he published Proust entre deux siècles (1989; English translation, 1992). He also edited Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal (1993), and analyzed modernity and the avant-garde in Les Cinq Paradoxes de la modernité (1990; English translation, 1994). He presented a cultural history of the Dreyfus Affair in Connaissez vous Brunetière? Enquête sur un antidreyfusard et ses amis (1997). To critical theory, he devoted La Troisième République des lettres (1983) and La Démon de la théorie (1998). His latest book is Les Antimodernes (2005). Compagnon is also a professor at the Collège de France and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.