Born in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon in 1966, William Marx attended the Lycée Thiers in Marseille before enrolling at the École normale supérieure in 1986. After ranking first in the agrégation exam in classical literature in 1989, he defended his doctoral dissertation in 2000 at Paris-Sorbonne University and earned his habilitation to supervise research in 2005 at Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis University. He taught in the United States and Japan, as well as at several French universities, before being elected in 2019 as a professor at the Collège de France in the Chair of Comparative Literatures.
A member of the Academia Europaea, a laureate of the Académie française and the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, an honorary member of the Institut universitaire de France, a recipient of the International Francqui Professor Chair, and a former fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, a regular guest lecturer at foreign universities, and editor of works by T. S. Eliot and Paul Valéry—including Valéry’s previously unpublished *Cours de poétique* —he focuses in particular on literary canons and libraries, as well as on the long-term evolution of aesthetic systems and the status of literature from antiquity to the present day, and on how these vary across cultures. Among his works—many of which have been published by Éditions de Minuit and translated into about ten languages—are *The Birth of Modern Criticism* (2002), *Farewell to Literature* (2005), *The Life of a Man of Letters* (2009), *The Tomb of Oedipus* (2012), *Hatred of Literature* (2015), *A Joyful Knowledge* (2018), *Living in the World’s Library* (2020), *New Stars* (2021), *A Summer with Don Quixote* (2024), and *Libraries of the Mind* (2025).
Photo credit: © Musée d’Orsay / Sophie Crépy
