Paul Bénichou

About the author

Born in Tlemcen in 1908, Paul Bénichou was a French-Algerian writer, critic, and literary historian whose work fundamentally reoriented the study of French romanticism. He first gained prominence with Morales du grand siècle (1948), a landmark examination of the social context of seventeenth-century French classics. He then embarked on a sweeping research program tracing the radical pessimism of mid-nineteenth-century writers, producing a series of major works beginning with Le Sacre de l'écrivain (1973).

Together, these studies amounted to a major reinterpretation of the creative writer's place in modernity and the role of literature in legitimating modern society's values. He died in Paris in 2001.