Thérèse Raquin Chapitre Xxvi

somehow recognize as authentic. Or as Ezra Pound neatly put it: ‘Literature is news that stays news.’ But if there are, in this sense, as many books as there are readers, there are also different readerships, distinct by age, class, background, xxvi PREFACE location and, not least, century. It might be more useful, therefore, to speak not of ‘Literature’ at all, but of ‘Literatures’. A literature of priests and magicians, which was followed by a literature of the hero and gradually turned