Baudelaire, Mallarme and Valery, three central poets of the modern French tradition, form a noble poetic lineage: Mallarme proceeded from Baudelaire, Valery from Mallarme; yet each went his separate way and attained a high degree of originality. All three reflected deeply on the principles of poetic creation; all three sought to apply these principles in the practice of writing. The central theme of the eighteen papers collected here is the constant confrontation of theory and practice. The majority are close studies of individual poems, based on rigourous textual analysis, but placing each...