Demolishing Nisard

Éric Chevillard

It may not be immediately clear why anyone should bother to demolish Nisard. Who on earth, after all, is Desire Nisard? A nineteenth-century literary critic, pedagogue, and member of the Academie Francaise, and ardent champion of the glories of seventeenth-century France, an implacable foe of the literature of his own age, a long-forgotten footnote in literary history. What harm can he do us now? You'd be surprised. Those dull books you keep reading? Blame Nisard. Trouble with your significant other? Nisard again. A painful pebble in your shoe? Nisard. No, Desire Nisard must be destroyed; the only question is how.