Browse all of the Salem on Literature series

Charles Baudelaire (Censorship (Ready Reference series))

Author Profile

On June 25, 1857, Baudelaire’s volume of poetry Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil, 1909) went on sale. Some of its poems had been published years earlier in periodicals, but the full impact of what Baudelaire was attempting to do with verse was not felt until the collection was published as a whole. With this book Baudelaire boldly professed that it was possible for something beautiful to be a product of evil, and that so-called perverse topics, such as lesbianism, could be molded into poetic eloquence. Although Baudelaire understood that some...

[The entire page is 706 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

Lookup any word on eNotes with our dictionary. Highlight the word and press SHIFT + D for a definition, or SHIFT + T for a synonym.