SOURCE: "Jules Laforgue," in Poetry, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 4, July, 1951, pp. 216-22.

Fowlie is one of the most respected and versatile critics of French literature. His works include translations of major dramatists and poets of France as well as critical studies of the major figures and movements of French letters. In the following excerpt, Fowlie discusses the nature of parody and the treatment of women and love in Moral Tales.

A deep sentimental impulse is behind Laforgue's poetry, but a sense of modesty keeps him from revealing himself directly. What might be confession and pure sentiment is always being converted into something else by irony. He is close to Baudelaire in his initial impulse to confess, but he developed, for self-protection, a far more prevalent use of irony than Baudelaire. His first twenty-nine poems, published after his death as Le Sanglot de la Terre, are the easiest to read...