Baudelaire and the Poetics of Craft

Graham Chesters analyses the works of Baudelaire and examines the structure of poetry.

Graham Chesters (Author)

9780521158954, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 April 2011

198 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.2 cm, 0.26 kg

This book is a study of how Baudelaire shapes the raw material of the French language within the formal framework of French versification. Graham Chesters analyses the sounds, metrical units, rhymes, syntax and overall structure of a range of texts to show the tension between irony and harmony inherent in the craft of the poet. This is particularly noticeable in Baudelaire's urban poetry, in which traditional expectations of poetic form clash with the pulsating freshness, difference and energy of modern Paris. As well as offering close stylistic analysis, the book explores Baudelaire's theoretical concerns.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Note on the text
1. The poetics of craft
2. A singular clarity of timbre, I: sound repetition and conventional form
3. A singular clarity of timbre, II: sound repetition and units of sense
4. Sound patterns and the secrets of composition
5. Rhymes
6. Pattern, expectation, surprise
7. 'Lapse' and recuperation
8. Experimentation and urban poetics, I: the limits of poetry
9. Experimentation and urban poetics, II: the transformation of a prose-poem
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Phonetics, phonology [CFH], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG]