Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris

Maria Scott's investigation of the operation of irony in Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris contends that the principal target of the collection's spleen is, in fact, its own readership. Despite being dependent on the bourgeoisie as a market for his own writing, Baudelaire was highly critical of bourgeois values and attitudes. Scott argues that these are indirectly mocked in Le Spleen de Paris, often in the person of the poet's supposed textual alter ego. The apparent transparency of meaning in the prose poems functions to blind us to their embedded irony. Though focused on Le Spleen de Paris, Scott's study engages with the full range of Baudelaire's writings, including his art and literary criticism. Her book will be of interest not only to Baudelaire scholars but also to those engaged more generally with nineteenth-century French culture.