Early in the nineteenth century Hegel pronounced that the greatness of art was past and that art was at an end. Is it this end, Antoine Compagnon asks, that we are now witnessing, almost two centuries
In the late twentieth century, the common sense approach to literature was deemed naive. Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the author, and Hillis Miller declared that all interpretation is theore
In his writing and his person, Michel de Montaigne embodied the Humanist ideal. He stands at the start of the French Renaissance in philosophy and literature. But what does Montaigne have to tell us a
