The City
Subtitle: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verhaeren (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature, Vol 1)
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing; Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Peter
Published: September 1994
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780820414348
Subjects: Continental European; Baudelaire, Charles; Criticism and interpretation; Rimbaud, Arthur; Verhaeren, Emile; Special Subjects In Literature; Poetry; 1821-1867; 19th century; Baudelaire, Charles,; City and town life in literature; French Poetry; History and criticism; Themes, motives; Literary Criticism
Description: Before the mid-nineteenth century the modern industrial metropolis played only a minor role in lyric poetry. By incorporating the new urban reality into their poetry as a physical and mental counterpart to the romantic world of nature, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verhaeren helped to accomplish an aesthetic and mental "quantum leap" which still influences lyric poetry today.

This book traces the attempt of three representative poets to explore the uncharted and repulsive, yet strangely mysterious and beautiful realm of the industrialized cityscape as an embodiment of lyric consciousness, as an intimate and enigmatic protection of themselves and their fellow human beings.