Baudelaire: Liberte, Libertinage and Modernity

Abstract

LE MODERN STYLE IN FRENCH LITERATURE ranges from Baudelaire's reading of Poe to the Modernism of Beckett, and the transition between these two phenomena might be located in Walter Benjamin's critique of literary Benjamin's work constitutes a double articulation that allows him to move between criticism (political ideology, the Russian Revolution, Marx, Brecht, Lukacs, revolutionary art) and a critique of Proust and Valery, who deliberately distanced their works and aesthetics from political concerns. The intersection between Benjamin's two fields of focus can be located in his framework of modernity. This conceptual frame arises at the crossroads of history, sociology, economics, urban architecture and politics. Their paths, passageways, and arcades map what he calls capitalism, filtered into the idiom of poetry. Benjamin's reading of modernity can best be seen in his analysis of the poetic oeuvre of Baudelaire.