FRE 363: 19th & 20th Century French Poetry

Exploring the philosophy which underpins Alfred de Vigny's creations as well as his rapports with other authors, this work offers a journey through time, space, thought, and art which illuminates this singular position at the very heart of Romanticism.

This book analyzes Romanticism as a unique cultural phenomenon and a spiritual revolution. Dupre philosophically reflects on its attempts to recapture the past and transform the present in a movement that is partly a return to premodern culture and partly a violent protest against it. Dupre examines the principal Romantic poets of England (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Hilderlin), and France (Lamartine, de Vigny, Hugo), all of whom, from different perspectives, pursued an absolute ideal. He then concentrates on the critical principles of Romantic aesthetics, the Romantic image of the person as reflected in the novel, and Romantic ethical and political theories. He then investigates the comprehensive syntheses of romantic thought in history, philosophy, and theology.

Author Michael Bishop has concentrated his study on ten central figures of that century: Desbordes-Valmore, Lamartine, Vigny, Baudelaire, Hugo, Mallarme, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Laforgue, and Lautreamont. Not only has he delved deeply into the complex structure of each of these ten poetic oeuvres, but in so doing has introduced to the discussion a number of those poets seemingly excluded from the book. Indeed, his thoughts on Nerval, Gautier, and others are frequently as perspicacious and comprehensive as those put forth in works devoted solely to those poets.

Each of the eleven essays, on different poets from Lamartine to Mallarm and Laforgue, focuses on the detailed organisation of a single poem. The method of close reading has been adopted in order to effect an introduction to the analysis of the 'basics' of poetic language (sound, metre, syntax, etc.), and in order to explore and illustrate some of the claims and arguments about poetry arising from developments in the prevailing literary theory. Theoretical positions are posed and tested in the terms of practical analysis and interpretation.

Daphne: The Second Consultation of Doctor Noiris based on the life of Julian, the fourth-century Roman Emperor often called the Apostate, or the last pagan. This is the first translation of the nineteenth-century French.