The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire

Synopsis

Walter benjamin's essays on the great french lyric poet charles baudelaire revolutionized not just the way we think about baudelaire, but our understanding of modernity and modernism as well. In these essays, benjamin challenges the image of baudelaire as late-romantic dreamer, and evokes instead the modern poet caught in a life-or-death struggle with the forces of the urban commodity capitalism that had emerged in paris around 1850.