Used Book – Baccalaureate Program: Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire

Can one imagine a poet being condemned for outraging public decency? Are the poems in this collection so subversive? To transform the ugliness of the world into poetic wonder, that is Baudelaire's aim. Boredom, sorrow, and spleen irrigate the verses with a sparkling beauty. "My youth was but a shadowy storm, / Crossed here and there by brilliant suns": what evocative power! Throughout the collection: - 2 text analyses - 1 text commentary The dossier consists of 8 chapters: 1 - Literary History: Declining Romanticism, Parnassus and the Birth of Modernity 2 - Charles Baudelaire and his Time 3 - Presentation of Les Fleurs du Mal 4 - Important Words in Les Fleurs du Mal (sweetness/voluptuousness; stupidity/anxiety; beauty/ugliness) 5 - Preparation for Dissertation 6 - Grammar 7 - Text Grouping: Poetic Alchemy: Mud and Gold Jean de La Fontaine, "Le chartier embourbé" (The bogged-down carter) Aloysius Bertrand, "L'alchimiste" (The Alchemist) Stéphane Mallarmé, "Les fenêtres" (The Windows) Francis Ponge, "Ode inachevée à la boue" (Unfinished Ode to Mud) (excerpt) 8 - Appropriation Exercises.