Baudelaire's Media Aesthetics The Gaze of the Fl}}neur and 19th-Century Media [Paperback]

Baudelaire's Media Aestheticssituates Charles Baudelaire in the midst of 19th-century media culture. It offers a thorough study of the role of newspapers, photography, and precinematic devices in Baudelaire's writings, while also discussing the cultural history of these media generally. The book reveals that Baudelaire was not merely inspired by the new media, but that he played with them, using them as frames of perception and ways of experiencing the world. His writings demonstrate how different media respond to one another and how the conventions of one medium can be paraphrased in another medium. Accordingly,Baudelaire's Media Aestheticsargues that Baudelaire should be seen merely as an advocate of pure poetry, but as a poet in a media saturated environment. It shows that mediation, montage, and movement are features that are central to Baudelaire's aesthetics and that his modernist aesthetics can be conceived of, to a large degree, as a media aesthetics.

Highlighting Baudelaire's interaction with the media of his age,Baudelaire's Media Aestheticsdiscusses the ways in which we respond to new media technology, drawing on perspectives from Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben. Combining detailed research with contemporary theory, the book opens up new perspectives on Baudelaire's writings, the figure of thefl?neur, and modernist aesthetics.

1. Introduction
2. Newspapers
3. Photographs
4. Pre-cinematic Devices
5. Corporeality
6. Toys
7. Media Imagery and Modernity
Bibliography
Index

Gr?tta is as comfortable dissecting four lines of a Baudelaire prose poem as she is discerning broad shifts in critical approaches to media. & The book offers unfailingly interesting micro-histories of the various dispositives under scrutiny, and the debate that emerges is always inclusive and informed. & [T]he clC,