Robert F. Jones wrote
>. In this respect, I would like to know if you--if anyone--would agree that, in
>poetry, Baudelaire would be the pioneer of postmodernism. Or would it be
>anachronistic to view a mid-19th-century figure as an postmodernist?
My instinct is to say yes, of course. But, to proceed more cautiously...we
would have to settle on a definition of modernist in terms of poetry and
decide whether or not we want to hold to some sense of chronology, not to
mention self-conscious intention, and the question of the history
(genealogy?) of critical interpretation. If I recall correctly, Baudelaire
claims in the preface to the prose poems that he dreams of absolute
control...is that modernist?
Literature might be different from philosophy because it relies more on
interpretation. Maybe it's interpretation that is post-modernist more than
the literary text itself? You could have a modernist Baudelaire in one
scheme, and a post-modernist in another.
Generally speaking, I think poetry and literature fall more to the wild
side of things. Baudelaire was clearly targeting bourgeois ideology and
it's linguistic and socio-psychological constructs. He was also targeting
naive romantic notions of poetic language and self-expression. But maybe I
see this because of a post-modern sensibility?
Jorge
------------------
>. In this respect, I would like to know if you--if anyone--would agree that, in
>poetry, Baudelaire would be the pioneer of postmodernism. Or would it be
>anachronistic to view a mid-19th-century figure as an postmodernist?
My instinct is to say yes, of course. But, to proceed more cautiously...we
would have to settle on a definition of modernist in terms of poetry and
decide whether or not we want to hold to some sense of chronology, not to
mention self-conscious intention, and the question of the history
(genealogy?) of critical interpretation. If I recall correctly, Baudelaire
claims in the preface to the prose poems that he dreams of absolute
control...is that modernist?
Literature might be different from philosophy because it relies more on
interpretation. Maybe it's interpretation that is post-modernist more than
the literary text itself? You could have a modernist Baudelaire in one
scheme, and a post-modernist in another.
Generally speaking, I think poetry and literature fall more to the wild
side of things. Baudelaire was clearly targeting bourgeois ideology and
it's linguistic and socio-psychological constructs. He was also targeting
naive romantic notions of poetic language and self-expression. But maybe I
see this because of a post-modern sensibility?
Jorge
------------------