FRENCH 215 BAUDELAIRE, VERLAINE, RIMBAUD

Close study of a body of poetry which ranks among the most influential in Western literature, and which initiates modern poeticsBaudelaire will be treated in relation to romanticism and conceptions of the modern.  In Verlaine, we will study the development of free verse and the liberation of poetic form.  This course will conclude by confronting Rimbaud’s effort to “changer la vie” through his visionary and surreal writing. Analysis of texts and their historical context, through a variety of approaches. Prerequisite: At least one unit of 206, 207, 208, or 209, an SAT II score of 690-800, an AP score of 5, or an equivalent departmental placement score,.

Les Fleurs du mal and Baudelaire's prose poems (Le Spleen de Paris); as well as essays by Baudelaire on literature and art will be studied together with paintings by Delacroix, Manet, Millet and Ingres.

We will also read a selection of Verlaine's poems from several volumes; Rimbaud's verse poems as well as Une Saison en enfer, and the Illuminations.  Our readings and discussion will reveal the complexities of poetic form in Les Fleurs du mal, the subversion of traditional versification in Verlaine and Rimbaud, Baudelaire's invention of the modern prose poem and Rimbaud's extraordinary explorations of poetic structure. 

Well-known associations between Verlaine and the paintings of Watteau and music by Debussy will be treated, as well as the striking correspondences between Rimbaud’s poetry and the paintings of Van Gogh.

The historical setting--the failed revolution of 1848, Louis Napoléon's coup d'état and the oppressive regime of the Second Empire, including the trial of Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire's celebration of Paris and the "heroism of modern life," and Rimbaud's commitment to the revolutionary Commune of 1871, as well as the link between this political stance and his visionary poetics--will be evoked. 

Issues of sexuality and gender will also be central: the sensuality of the non-European woman and the celebration of Delacroix's exoticism in Baudelaire as well as acute treatments of sexual and socio-economic issues in his late prose poems; homosexuality in Verlaine and Rimbaud; visionary and surreal multiplications of sexuality in Rimbaud.

Assignments:

One short mid-term paper
One oral presentation
One final paper

Texts:

Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire
Le Spleen de Paris, Baudelaire
Oeuvres Poétiques, Verlaine
Oeuvres, Rimbaud

Artwork:

Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Watteau, Van Gogh

Musical scores:

Debussy