{"product_id":"grotesque-figures","title":"Grotesque Figures","description":"\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":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481445736821,"sku":"9780801879456","price":42.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780801879456.jpg?v=1786089706","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/grotesque-figures","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}