William Marx's 'L'Adieu à la littérature' Revisited: Literature's Rise, Autonomy, and Decline

In a 2005 essay, French literary critic William Marx proposed a three-stage history of modern literature: expansion, autonomy, and devaluation. During the expansion phase, literature held unprecedented social importance in Europe, with figures like Voltaire and Rousseau achieving celebrity status and influencing events like the French Revolution. The autonomy phase saw writers like Flaubert, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Wilde turn away from social concerns, embracing art for art's sake. The final devaluation phase, which Marx argues continues today, saw literature become a specialized game with little public relevance. Marx identified three potential exits from this decline: experimentation, minimalism, and autofiction, the latter marking a return to reality and authorial responsibility. The essay, published by Éditions de Minuit, also considers whether literature's decline was self-inflicted or due to external factors like the rise of cinema and music. Marx acknowledges that the autonomous period, from Flaubert to Beckett and Borges, produced some of literature's greatest works. The article references Walter Benjamin's observation about Bertolt Brecht, who saved theater by reducing it to its minimal elements, suggesting literature might survive similarly. The piece was published on La Tempestad, a Mexican cultural magazine, and reflects ongoing debates about literature's role in contemporary society.