Title Grotesque figures : Baudelaire, Rousseau, and the aesthetics of modernity / Virginia E. Swain

Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 268 pages) : illustrations Series Parallax Parallax (Baltimore, Md.) Contents 1. Grotesque Figures -- 2. Rococo Rhetoric: Figures of the Past in "Le Poème du hachisch" -- 3. Identity Politics: "Rousseau" and "France" in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century -- 4. Baudelaire's Physiologie: Rousseau as Caricature and Type in the Prose Poems -- 5. Machines, Monsters, and Men: Realism and the Modern Grotesque -- 6. Socio-Political Implications of the Grotesque: "Opéra" and "Les Yeux des Pauvres" -- 7. Rousseau, Trauma and Fetishism: "Le Vieux Saltimbanque." Summary Charles Baudelaire is usually read as a paradigmatically modern poet, whose work ushered in a new era of French literature. But the common emphasis on his use of new forms and styles overlooks the complex role of the past in his work. In Grotesque Figures, Virginia E. Swain explores how the specter of the eighteenth century made itself felt in Baudelaire's modern poetry in the pervasive textual and figural presence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Not only do Rousseau's ideas inform Baudelaire's theory of the grotesque, but Rousseau makes numerous appearances in Baudelaire's poetry as a caricature or type representing the hold of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution over Baudelaire and his contemporaries. As a character in "Le Poème du hashisch" and the Petits Poèmes en prose, "Rousseau" gives the grotesque a human form.Swain's literary, cultural, and historical analysis deepens our understanding of Baudelaire and of nineteenth-century aesthetics by relating Baudelaire's poetic theory and practice to Enlightenment debates about allegory and the grotesque in the arts. Offering a novel reading of Baudelaire's ambivalent engagement with the eighteenth-century, Grotesque Figures examines nineteenth-century ideological debates over French identity, Rousseau's political and artistic legacy, the aesthetic and political significance of the rococo, and the presence of the grotesque in the modern Analysis Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800 Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-259) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL English digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Print version record Subject Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867 -- Criticism and interpretation Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 -- Influence SUBJECT Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 -- Influence Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867 -- Criticism and interpretation Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867 fast Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 fast Baudelaire, Charles. swd Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. swd Subject Grotesque in literature. Grotesque in literature Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) Groteske Literatur Het Groteske. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 2003027926 ISBN 9781421427683 1421427680 1421429233 9781421429236

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