French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Compagnon, Petits spleens numériques
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Antoine Compagnon, Petits spleens numériques, Éditions des Équateurs, coll. "Parallèles", 2015.
EAN13: 9782849904176
150 pages
13.50 EUR
Publisher's Overview
From Summer with Baudelaire to a digital winter—or rather, a digital spring, since one of the hallmarks of our era is the virtual revolution. Taking Baudelaire and his ambivalent attitude toward technology and the modern world as a starting point, Antoine Compagnon engages with new technologies with candor and humor. It must be said that this world-renowned specialist on Les Fleurs du mal and Montaigne’s Essays is also a graduate of the École Polytechnique and a former civil engineer from the Ponts et Chaussées. Across forty witty and particularly biting chapters, Antoine Compagnon embarks on hilarious excursions into the worlds of Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, MOOCs, and those powerful new figures in American universities known as "digital officers." Constantly contrasting the old world of paper and archives with the all-digital realm, readily touching upon his personal life, his digital "prostheses," and his lectures around the world—in Japan, France, the United States, and Quebec—Compagnon reveals himself to be a uniquely poetic, amusing, and unbiased "geek" and "nerd," shedding light on both the absurdities of our virtual universe and its immense contributions to our civilization. These short essays were published over the course of a year in the Huffington Post.
Originally published as a series of essays in the Huffington Post, this collection bridges the gap between traditional literary scholarship and modern digital culture. The author brings a unique dual perspective to the subject, combining his expertise as a world-renowned specialist on Charles Baudelaire and Michel de Montaigne with his early background as a graduate of the École Polytechnique and a civil engineer. Throughout the volume, he examines contemporary institutions such as Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, and massive open online courses with both candor and humor.
This engaging work is well suited for readers interested in the intersection of traditional humanities and the modern virtual landscape, including literary scholars, students, and general readers curious about the societal shifts brought by the digital revolution. By placing modern technological advancements in dialogue with nineteenth-century spleen and the writings of Baudelaire, the book helps illuminate the absurdities as well as the profound civilizational contributions of our current technological moment without resorting to uncritical celebration or technophobia.