Baudelaire's Shadow: On Poetic Determination

Baudelaire’s fame and notoriety have been established through the representation of his complex work through reductive profiles: the poet of the modern city, of erotic obsession, of Satanic revolt, of colonial fantasies, of mystical correspondences, of corporeal decay . . . But what is it that holds these facets of the work together? Is there a logic underpinning the proliferation of themes, styles, and personae in The Flowers of Evil, while suturing content and form?

Baudelaire’s Shadow arg...