Nineteenth-Century French Poetry Introductions to Close Reading [Paperback]

Present a fresh approach to studying nineteenth-century French poetry through the method of close reading.Presenting a new approach to the study of nineteenth-century French poetry, each essay in this collection focuses on the detailed organization of a single poem. Eleven essays cover poets from Lamartine to Mallarmé and Laforgue.Presenting a new approach to the study of nineteenth-century French poetry, each essay in this collection focuses on the detailed organization of a single poem. Eleven essays cover poets from Lamartine to Mallarmé and Laforgue.Presenting a new approach to the study of nineteenth-century French poetry, each essay in this collection focuses on the detailed organization of a single poem. Eleven essays, written from a wide range of critical and theoretical viewpoints, cover poets from Lamartine to Mallarmé and Laforgue. The method of close reading has been adopted in order to effect an introduction to the analysis of the basics of poetic language (sound, meter, syntax, etc.) and in order to explore and illustrate some of the claims and arguments about poetry arising from developments in modern literary theory. Theoretical positions are posed and tested in the terms of practical analysis and interpretation. Prendergast's introduction to the volume situates the essays in a series of general perspectives and contexts, and Clive Scott has provided an appendix on French versification.1. Introduction Christopher Prendergast; 2. The poem as hypothesis of origin: Lamartine's Le Lac Eric Gans; 3. The rhetoric of contemplation: Hugo's La Pente de la r?verie Victor Brombert; 4. The designs of prosody: Vigny's La Mort du loup Clive Scott; 5. The lyric persona: Nerval's El Desdichado Rae Beth Gordon; 6. Under-reading at noon: Leconte de Lisle's Midi Mary Ann Caws; 7. Intertextuality and interpretation: Baudelaire's Correspondances Jonathan Culler; 8. Questions of Metaphor: Gautier's La Nue Christopher Prendergast; 9. Trainl3"