Flowers of Evil (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Charles Baudelaire
- First Published: 1857
- Type of Work: Lyric Poetry
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: France or French people, Sex or sexuality, Nineteenth century, Flowers, Good and evil, Censorship, Devils or demons, Romanticism, Satan or Satanism, Boredom, Blasphemy
Although dismissed as morbid by many of his contemporaries, Baudelaire was actually lancing the boils of neurotic repression. He confronted images of gross flesh, the intoxications of strange touch and smell, forbidden sensual desires and fantasies; he celebrated exotic but voraciously consuming women, cats and tigresses who clawed their way to his heart. By flaunting such forbidden flights of fancy in an age of bourgeois respectability and hypocritical religiosity, Baudelaire was updating the liberating imperative of Romanticism.
He adopted the macabre from Edgar Allan Poe--a...
[The entire page is 526 words long]
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