{"product_id":"grotesque-figures-baudelaire-rousseau-and-the-aesthetics-of-modernity-9780801879456","title":"Grotesque Figures: Baudelaire, Rousseau, and the Aesthetics of Modernity","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Virginia E. Swain\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: European - General\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCharles Baudelaire is usually read as a paradigmatically modern poet, whose work ushered in a new era of French literature. But the common emphasis on his use of new forms and styles overlooks the complex role of the past in his work. In \u003ci\u003eGrotesque Figures\u003c\/i\u003e, Virginia E. Swain explores how the specter of the eighteenth century made itself felt in Baudelaire's modern poetry in the pervasive textual and figural presence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Not only do Rousseau's ideas inform Baudelaire's theory of the grotesque, but Rousseau makes numerous appearances in Baudelaire's poetry as a caricature or type representing the hold of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution over Baudelaire and his contemporaries. As a character in \u003ci\u003e\"Le Poème du hashisch\"\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003ePetits Poèmes en prose\u003c\/i\u003e, \"Rousseau\" gives the grotesque a human form.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSwain's literary, cultural, and historical analysis deepens our understanding of Baudelaire and of nineteenth-century aesthetics by relating Baudelaire's poetic theory and practice to Enlightenment debates about allegory and the grotesque in the arts. Offering a novel reading of Baudelaire's ambivalent engagement with the eighteenth-century, \u003ci\u003eGrotesque Figures\u003c\/i\u003e examines nineteenth-century ideological debates over French identity, Rousseau's political and artistic legacy, the aesthetic and political significance of the rococo, and the presence of the grotesque in the modern.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Johns Hopkins University Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47813872746647,"sku":"9780801879456","price":4775.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9780801879456.webp?v=1778339117","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/grotesque-figures-baudelaire-rousseau-and-the-aesthetics-of-modernity-9780801879456","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}