Robert T. Denommé, who has written ex­tensively on French literature, here offers a companion volume to his Nineteenth­-Century French Romantic Poets, previ­ously published in this series. Once again working within an historical, philosophi­cal, and aesthetic context, he provides a wealth of critical insights for the general reader as well as the specialist. His first chapter surveys the evolution of poetic expression in France, and succeeding chapters study the major poets--Théophile Gautier, Théodore de Banville, Leconte de Lisle, and José-Maria de He­redia. Incisive and concise, the book provides a good general introduction to, and a long-overdue reassessment of, French Par­nassianism.

Naslagwerk van de liedkunst en de literatuur hierover.

This collection illuminates the uniquely fascinating era between 1820 and 1950 in French poetry - a time in which diverse aesthetic ideas conflicted and converged as poetic forms evolved at an astonishing pace. It includes generous selections from all the established giants - among them Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Breton - as well as works from a wide variety of less well-known poets such as Claudel and Cendrars, whose innovations proved vital to the progress of poetry in France. The significant literary schools of the time are also represented in sections focusing on such movements as Romanticism, Symbolism, Cubism and Surrealism. Eloquent and inspirational, this rich and exhilarating anthology reveals an era of exceptional vitality.

A creative innovator who boldly traversed traditional boundaries separating different genres and schools, French poet Theophile Gautier was extremely influential, playing a role in shaping the styles of poets from T. S. Elliot to Ezra Pound. In this, his most acclaimed collection of verse, Gautier offers his philosophical ponderings and lyrical musings.

Leaving Parnassus: The Lyric Subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud considers how the crisis of the lyric subject in the middle of the nineteenth century in France is a direct response to the aesthetic principles of Parnassian poetry, which dominated the second half of the century much more than critics often think. The poets considered here rebel against the strict confines of traditional and contemporary poetry and attempt to create radically new discursive practices. Specifically, the close readings of poems apply recent studies of subjectivity in poetry and focus on the works of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud to see how each subverts the dominant tradition of French poetry in a unique way. Whereas previous studies considered isolated aspects of each poet's lyric subject, Leaving Parnassus shows that the situation of the lyric is a source of subversion throughout the poets' entire work, and as such it is crucial to our full understanding of their respective innovations.

Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies offer an inexhaustible variety of style and expression that have made them the foundation of the French art song repertoire. During the second half of his long career, Fauré composed all but a handful of his songs within six carefully integrated cycles. Fauré moved systematically through his poetic contemporaries, exhausting Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal before immersing himself in the Parnassian poets. He would set nine poems by Armand Silvestre in swift succession (1878-84), seventeen by Paul Verlaine (1887-94), and eighteen by Charles Van Lerberghe (1906-14). As an artist deeply engaged with some of the most important cultural issues of the period, Fauré reimagined his musical idiom with each new poet and school, and his song cycles show the same sensitivity to the poetic material. Far more than Debussy, Ravel, or Poulenc, he crafted his song cycles as integrated works, reordering poems freely and using narratives, key schemes, and even leitmotifs to unify the individual songs. The Fauré Song Cycles explores the peculiar vision behind each synthesis of music and verse, revealing the astonishing imagination and insight of Fauré’s musical readings. This book offers not only close readings of Fauré’s musical works but an interdisciplinary study of how he responded to the changing schools and aesthetic currents of French poetry.

Members of a New York street gang struggle to feed their families, while a prophecy augurs doom. A dark adventure into 1919 Brooklyn. When World War I ends and the industrial waterfront takes an economic dive, an influenza sweeps through the old shacks and tenements. After a snowstorm arrives, an ancient prophecy resurfaces in the old Irishtown section. Gang wars and blood feuds erupt. Big business violently collides with unions and a police officer disappears, all while the Italian "Black Hand" gropes northward where the Irish "White Hand" has long controlled the labor racket.Worst of all, dead men appear after the storm to haunt and divide Irishtown and the White Hand gang that protects it. The sweep of events that alter their lives had been foretold by the aging survivors of the Great Hunger (Irish potato famine). Now a cataclysmic event is prophesied to be coming that will see a hero ascend "like the rising of the moon."The characters' surnames and bloodlines are branches that stretch through our own family trees and into this tale that careens from the old world to the new. Their hopes, passions, promises and pledges teeter in this volatile world. And when they peer into a looking-glass, the city is always in the reflection.