SOURCE: An introduction to La Fanfarlo, in Baudelaire: "La Fanfarlo" and "Le spleen de Paris" by Barbara Wright and David H. T. Scott, Grant & Cutler Ltd., 1984, pp. 9-33.

Wright is an educator specializing in French literature. In the following essay on La Fanfarlo, she discusses the structure of the novella and assesses the relationship between the narrator and the story told.

Ambivalence surrounds virtually everything concerned with La Fanfarlo. First published in January 1847 in the periodical Bulletin de la Société des gens de lettres, the precise date of its composition is the source of disagreement among scholars. It was probably written some time between 1843 and the end of 1846.

The autobiographical links, likewise, are tantalisingly elusive. If Asselineau and Gautier were among the first of many authoritative commentators to reach unanimity on the striking resemblance, physical and otherwise, between Samuel Cramer and Baudelaire himself, the parallelism with Emile...