Paul Bénichou
Encyclopedia
Paul Bénichou, was a French writer, intellectual, critic, and literary historian.
Bénichou first achieved prominence in 1948 with Morales du grand siècle, his work on the social context of the French seventeenth-century classics. Later Bénichou undertook a prodigious research program, seeking to understand the radical pessimism and disappointment expressed by mid-nineteenth writers. This project resulted in a series of major works, beginning with Le Sacre de l’écrivain, 1750-1830 (1973; Eng. trans. 1999 [The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830]). A 1995 volume, Selon Mallarmé
, may be considered an extension of this series. Together, these works amount to an important reinterpretation of French romanticism
. Critic Tzvetan Todorov
described Bénichou’s special interest as “the thought of poets.” More generally, though, Paul Bénichou’s work contributed to the understanding of the creative writer's place in modernity
, and illuminated the role of writers in legitimating the institutions and values of modern society.
, but his intellectual brilliance soon called him to Paris
. After winning the annual concours général des lycées for best thème latin in his final year of secondary school and graduating from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand
, Bénichou studied at the École Normale Supérieure
, where Jean-Paul Sartre
, Raymond Aron
, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
were among his fellow students. He obtained his license in 1927 and his agrégation in 1930.
During his student years Bénichou was active in radical politics and literary surrealism
, writing poetry; his name is mentioned in Maurice Nadeau’s Histoire du surréalisme. But it was as a scholar and a teacher that Bénichou made his mark. He taught in French secondary schools and had all but completed his first major work, Morales du grand siècle, when Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg
. After the capitulation of France
and the installation of the virulently anti-Semitic Vichy
regime, Bénichou, as a French Jew born in Algeria
, found himself legally stripped of French nationality and denied the right to earn his livelihood by teaching in French schools, though his father and grandfather had never been citizens of any country but France.
In the early 1940s Bénichou went with his family to Argentina
, where he found a teaching position in Buenos Aires
, at the Institut Français (co-founded by Roger Caillois
). While in the Argentine capital he participated in literary circles and met Jorge Luis Borges
, whom he and his daughter, Sylvia Roubaud, would later translate; he also developed a scholarly interest in medieval Spanish literature and published groundbreaking work on the Spanish romancero.
The publication and critical success of Morales du grand siècle (1948; Eng. trans. 1971 [Man and Ethics]) established his scholarly reputation; the volume has never gone out of print and has sold more than 100,000 copies. In 1949 Paul Bénichou returned to Paris to take up a position at the prestigious Lycée Condorcet
, where Marcel Proust
studied in the 1880s; he continued to teach there until 1958.
in particular. What could account for Baudelaire’s radical pessimism
, shared by writers like Gustave Flaubert
, in an era of general confidence, progress, and hope? For twenty years, Bénichou researched the history of ideas about creative writers’ relation to society. This research culminated in a series of major works that purport to solve this problem. (Ironically, Bénichou never wrote a major work on Baudelaire, though he published a number of significant essays on the author of Les Fleurs du mal.) Taken together, these works constitute a coherent study of French literature and thought from 1750 to 1898, analyzing the spiritual predicament of modern France and shedding light on the literature of other Western nations as well as on contemporary problems of global civilization. These interrelated works, which Bénichou began to publish only at the age of 65, are:
The first four works were republished posthumously by Gallimard in a two-volume set under the title Romantismes français (2004).
In the middle of this gargantuan intellectual undertaking, Bénichou was invited to teach at Harvard University
, where he taught one semester a year from 1959 until his retirement from teaching in 1979. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1976.
In his later years, Bénichou remained active and in good health, working in his apartment on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in the Montparnasse
district of Paris
. He continued to write and publish; when he died, at the age of 92, he was writing a commentary on the haunting, enigmatic poems by Gérard de Nerval
known as Les Chimères. He is interred in Paris’s Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, not far from the tomb of Frédéric Chopin
.
the product of a religiously grounded society faced with a decline in the credibility of its ideological and religious foundations. This decline occurred at the same time as, and to a large extent as the result of, the rise of a belief in the essential self-sufficiency of human beings, belief in human autonomy being a hallmark of the Enlightenment
. The Enlightenment was accompanied by a widespread hope for a regenerating elite that would help usher in a new, more just social order. The “consecration of the writer” emerged from these two complementary though divergent tendencies in the period from 1760 to 1789, during which the writer’s mission was widely believed to be that of guiding humanity to the promised land of the new order.
The traumatic experience of the French Revolution
modified this program, bringing about a convergence of two tendencies that had, till then, been divergent. On the one hand, the secular, anti-religious tendencies of the Enlightenment were modified, becoming more accommodating of religious notions, as seen in different ways in the work of Germaine de Staël, Benjamin Constant
, and Victor Cousin
, among others. On the other hand, the experience of the Revolution and the failure of its initial hopes contributed to a religious revival, seen in the works of Chateaubriand, Balanche
, and Lamartine. It is to this "deep convergence," as Bénichou put it, that the consecration of the poet-thinker is due, in the heyday of French romanticism
in the years after 1820.
The changes Bénichou describes were brought about by "the rise of an intellectual corps possessing new prestige and a new social make-up," a "corps" that emerged transfigured after the Revolution to lay claim to "spiritual authority" (The Consecration of the Writer, p. 339). In Bénichou's work, "spiritual authority" is a key concept, though he never defines it concisely. From the body of Bénichou's writing, however, emerges a vision of humanity with deep-rooted needs both for belief and a social doctrine of legitimation capable of enlisting the support of society generally. In France, the Roman Catholic Church
traditionally fulfilled this role, but a "new spiritual power [was] born in the eighteenth century from the disrepute of the old Church" (ibid., p. 331). It was the rise of this "philosophic faith" (which Bénichou also calls the "faith of the eighteenth century," the "modern faith," the "new faith," "philosophical humanism," and the "secular faith") that initiated the crisis of modernity.
is essentially that of belief. Romanticism
is "the vast prologue or first important act of a longer history that continues in our own time" (The Consecration of the Writer, p. 9), or, intellectually, as "the general debate, which still goes on, between the freedom of thought and expression [la liberté critique] and dogma" (Le Temps des prophètes, p. 11). Historically, this debate first emerges in earnest in the 16th century.
The key to the drama, in Bénichou's view, is the weakening of the West's traditional "spiritual power." Modernity appears as an extended period of conflict among various efforts to redefine what such a power might be in the future. Independent writers have, in these circumstances, offered a social location for a secular version of "spiritual authority" -- the pouvoir spiritual laïque of the subtitle to Le Sacre de l'écrivain. Historians who ignore this issue in favor of dimensions that are exclusively social, economic, or political are missing something essential, in Bénichou's view. "The Romantic period, in the final analysis, corresponds to an enormous effort to give a corrected edition of the system of the Enlightenment that would be free of the unfortunate aspects that the Terror
had caused to stand out so strikingly," Bénichou said in a late interview ("Parcours de l'écrivain," Le Débat (Mar.-Apr. 1989), p. 25).
But consensus on the role of the writer was short-lived. Already shaken in the aftermath of the July Revolution
of 1830, after 1848 the poet-thinker ceased to be a credible spiritual authority in the eyes of bourgeois society. In France
, the Church resumed its status as the official spiritual power. Modern conservatism
began to emerge, as "the eighteenth century begins to be the object of a vast intellectual disapproval" (ibid., p. 28). But poets, writers, and artists, for their part, were unwilling to lay down their claims to spiritual authority. Instead, they became "disenchanted" -- a disenchantment that has continued to the present day and that has even been institutionalized in many artistic circles.
, post-structuralism
, and enthusiasm for literary theory
in literary criticism with skepticism. In his view, these are inherently flawed approaches, in that they tend to reduce the work of literature
to one of its modalities. Bénichou insisted, instead, that a work of literature
is inherently heterogeneous and multifaceted. His hostility to single-minded approaches to criticism and disdain for popular contemporary critical schools delayed appreciation of his work during his own lifetime, but this neglect seems, paradoxically, to have contributed to its long-term vitality.
Bénichou first achieved prominence in 1948 with Morales du grand siècle, his work on the social context of the French seventeenth-century classics. Later Bénichou undertook a prodigious research program, seeking to understand the radical pessimism and disappointment expressed by mid-nineteenth writers. This project resulted in a series of major works, beginning with Le Sacre de l’écrivain, 1750-1830 (1973; Eng. trans. 1999 [The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830]). A 1995 volume, Selon Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
, may be considered an extension of this series. Together, these works amount to an important reinterpretation of French romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. Critic Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 with his wife Nancy Huston and their two children, writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory....
described Bénichou’s special interest as “the thought of poets.” More generally, though, Paul Bénichou’s work contributed to the understanding of the creative writer's place in modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
, and illuminated the role of writers in legitimating the institutions and values of modern society.
Early years
Bénichou was born in Tlemcen, French AlgeriaFrench Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
, but his intellectual brilliance soon called him to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. After winning the annual concours général des lycées for best thème latin in his final year of secondary school and graduating from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand
Lycée Louis-le-Grand
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand is a public secondary school located in Paris, widely regarded as one of the most rigorous in France. Formerly known as the Collège de Clermont, it was named in king Louis XIV of France's honor after he visited the school and offered his patronage.It offers both a...
, Bénichou studied at the École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
, where Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Raymond Aron
Raymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...
, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
were among his fellow students. He obtained his license in 1927 and his agrégation in 1930.
During his student years Bénichou was active in radical politics and literary surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, writing poetry; his name is mentioned in Maurice Nadeau’s Histoire du surréalisme. But it was as a scholar and a teacher that Bénichou made his mark. He taught in French secondary schools and had all but completed his first major work, Morales du grand siècle, when Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
. After the capitulation of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and the installation of the virulently anti-Semitic Vichy
Vichy
Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...
regime, Bénichou, as a French Jew born in Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
, found himself legally stripped of French nationality and denied the right to earn his livelihood by teaching in French schools, though his father and grandfather had never been citizens of any country but France.
In the early 1940s Bénichou went with his family to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, where he found a teaching position in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, at the Institut Français (co-founded by Roger Caillois
Roger Caillois
Roger Caillois was a French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together literary criticism, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on subjects as diverse as games, play and the sacred...
). While in the Argentine capital he participated in literary circles and met Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, whom he and his daughter, Sylvia Roubaud, would later translate; he also developed a scholarly interest in medieval Spanish literature and published groundbreaking work on the Spanish romancero.
The publication and critical success of Morales du grand siècle (1948; Eng. trans. 1971 [Man and Ethics]) established his scholarly reputation; the volume has never gone out of print and has sold more than 100,000 copies. In 1949 Paul Bénichou returned to Paris to take up a position at the prestigious Lycée Condorcet
Lycée Condorcet
The Lycée Condorcet is a school founded in 1803 in Paris, France, located at 8, rue du Havre, in the city's IXe arrondissement. Since its inception, various political eras have seen it given a number of different names, but its identity today honors the memory of the Marquis de Condorcet. The...
, where Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
studied in the 1880s; he continued to teach there until 1958.
The Consecration of the Writer
It was in the early 1950s that Bénichou undertook his most ambitious and important scholarly project. He had always been struck by the pessimism of the great French writers of the mid-nineteenth century—that of Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
in particular. What could account for Baudelaire’s radical pessimism
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
, shared by writers like Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
, in an era of general confidence, progress, and hope? For twenty years, Bénichou researched the history of ideas about creative writers’ relation to society. This research culminated in a series of major works that purport to solve this problem. (Ironically, Bénichou never wrote a major work on Baudelaire, though he published a number of significant essays on the author of Les Fleurs du mal.) Taken together, these works constitute a coherent study of French literature and thought from 1750 to 1898, analyzing the spiritual predicament of modern France and shedding light on the literature of other Western nations as well as on contemporary problems of global civilization. These interrelated works, which Bénichou began to publish only at the age of 65, are:
- Le Sacre de l'écrivain (1973; English translation 1999 [’’The Consecration of the Writer’’])
- Le Temps des prophètes (1977)
- Les Mages romantiques (1988)
- L'École du désenchantement (1992)
- Selon Mallarmé (1995)
The first four works were republished posthumously by Gallimard in a two-volume set under the title Romantismes français (2004).
In the middle of this gargantuan intellectual undertaking, Bénichou was invited to teach at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he taught one semester a year from 1959 until his retirement from teaching in 1979. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1976.
In his later years, Bénichou remained active and in good health, working in his apartment on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in the Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
district of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He continued to write and publish; when he died, at the age of 92, he was writing a commentary on the haunting, enigmatic poems by Gérard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.- Biography :...
known as Les Chimères. He is interred in Paris’s Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, not far from the tomb of Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
.
Bénichou’s Ideas
Bénichou considered modernityModernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
the product of a religiously grounded society faced with a decline in the credibility of its ideological and religious foundations. This decline occurred at the same time as, and to a large extent as the result of, the rise of a belief in the essential self-sufficiency of human beings, belief in human autonomy being a hallmark of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. The Enlightenment was accompanied by a widespread hope for a regenerating elite that would help usher in a new, more just social order. The “consecration of the writer” emerged from these two complementary though divergent tendencies in the period from 1760 to 1789, during which the writer’s mission was widely believed to be that of guiding humanity to the promised land of the new order.
The traumatic experience of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
modified this program, bringing about a convergence of two tendencies that had, till then, been divergent. On the one hand, the secular, anti-religious tendencies of the Enlightenment were modified, becoming more accommodating of religious notions, as seen in different ways in the work of Germaine de Staël, Benjamin Constant
Benjamin Constant
Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...
, and Victor Cousin
Victor Cousin
Victor Cousin was a French philosopher. He was a proponent of Scottish Common Sense Realism and had an important influence on French educational policy.-Early life:...
, among others. On the other hand, the experience of the Revolution and the failure of its initial hopes contributed to a religious revival, seen in the works of Chateaubriand, Balanche
Pierre-Simon Ballanche
Pierre-Simon Ballanche was a French writer and counterrevolutionary philosopher, who elaborated a theology of progress that possessed considerable influence in French literary circles in the beginning of the nineteenth century...
, and Lamartine. It is to this "deep convergence," as Bénichou put it, that the consecration of the poet-thinker is due, in the heyday of French romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in the years after 1820.
The changes Bénichou describes were brought about by "the rise of an intellectual corps possessing new prestige and a new social make-up," a "corps" that emerged transfigured after the Revolution to lay claim to "spiritual authority" (The Consecration of the Writer, p. 339). In Bénichou's work, "spiritual authority" is a key concept, though he never defines it concisely. From the body of Bénichou's writing, however, emerges a vision of humanity with deep-rooted needs both for belief and a social doctrine of legitimation capable of enlisting the support of society generally. In France, the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
traditionally fulfilled this role, but a "new spiritual power [was] born in the eighteenth century from the disrepute of the old Church" (ibid., p. 331). It was the rise of this "philosophic faith" (which Bénichou also calls the "faith of the eighteenth century," the "modern faith," the "new faith," "philosophical humanism," and the "secular faith") that initiated the crisis of modernity.
Bénichou and the Problem of Modernity
For Bénichou, then, the problem of modernityModernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
is essentially that of belief. Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
is "the vast prologue or first important act of a longer history that continues in our own time" (The Consecration of the Writer, p. 9), or, intellectually, as "the general debate, which still goes on, between the freedom of thought and expression [la liberté critique] and dogma" (Le Temps des prophètes, p. 11). Historically, this debate first emerges in earnest in the 16th century.
The key to the drama, in Bénichou's view, is the weakening of the West's traditional "spiritual power." Modernity appears as an extended period of conflict among various efforts to redefine what such a power might be in the future. Independent writers have, in these circumstances, offered a social location for a secular version of "spiritual authority" -- the pouvoir spiritual laïque of the subtitle to Le Sacre de l'écrivain. Historians who ignore this issue in favor of dimensions that are exclusively social, economic, or political are missing something essential, in Bénichou's view. "The Romantic period, in the final analysis, corresponds to an enormous effort to give a corrected edition of the system of the Enlightenment that would be free of the unfortunate aspects that the Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
had caused to stand out so strikingly," Bénichou said in a late interview ("Parcours de l'écrivain," Le Débat (Mar.-Apr. 1989), p. 25).
But consensus on the role of the writer was short-lived. Already shaken in the aftermath of the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
of 1830, after 1848 the poet-thinker ceased to be a credible spiritual authority in the eyes of bourgeois society. In France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the Church resumed its status as the official spiritual power. Modern conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
began to emerge, as "the eighteenth century begins to be the object of a vast intellectual disapproval" (ibid., p. 28). But poets, writers, and artists, for their part, were unwilling to lay down their claims to spiritual authority. Instead, they became "disenchanted" -- a disenchantment that has continued to the present day and that has even been institutionalized in many artistic circles.
Bénichou's Critical Method
Finally, Paul Bénichou's critical method depends on an interpretive ideal of plausibilité ('plausibility' or 'credibility'), i.e. fidelity to the thought embodied in the work, so that any interpretation of a work ought, at least in principle, to be acceptable to its author. He viewed structuralismStructuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
, post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
, and enthusiasm for literary theory
Literary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
in literary criticism with skepticism. In his view, these are inherently flawed approaches, in that they tend to reduce the work of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
to one of its modalities. Bénichou insisted, instead, that a work of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
is inherently heterogeneous and multifaceted. His hostility to single-minded approaches to criticism and disdain for popular contemporary critical schools delayed appreciation of his work during his own lifetime, but this neglect seems, paradoxically, to have contributed to its long-term vitality.