This book of linked essays contains the first critical study of Baudelaire's development as a poet, from his youth onwards.

This book of linked essays contains the first critical study of Baudelaire's development as a poet, from his youth onward. It also includes studies of the development of Baudelaire's aesthetic, detailed commentaries on a number of his finest poems, and accounts of three intriguing and crucial "encounters" with notable contemporaries. Three of the essays are previously unpublished and four very recent; the other eleven have been thoroughly updated, revised, and, in some cases, substantially expanded. Together, they constitute a new and important contribution to the understanding and...

Les Fleurs du Mal, once the most infamous book of poems in French literature, has in this century become the most famous and the most admired, owing its "landmark" status to the sheer aesthetic quality of its verses rather than to its judicial condemnation on its first publication in 1857. In this volume, Professor Leakey provides a comprehensive guide to the understanding and appreciation of Les Fleurs du Mal, offering new insights into its composition, themes and style, setting it in its historical context, and devoting a whole chapter to Baudelaire's crowning achievement, Le Cygne.