SOURCE: "The Poetics of the Commonplace in Les Fleurs du Mal," in The Modern Language Review, Vol. 86, No. 1, January, 1991, pp. 57-65.

In the following article, Robb discusses Baudelaire's use of common words and phrases in Les Fleurs du Mal.

Much attention has been lavished on the commonplace in recent years, and it would be futile, not to say unoriginal, to attempt another rehabilitation of the cliché as an expressive literary device. Neither would it be particularly profitable, in a short study, to analyse the manner in which a poet such as Baudelaire exploits and renovates literary stereotypes. The very definition of the stereotype poses several problems: when does a certain figure become a cliché? Is the writer aware of its status as a cliché, or is its use associated with a particular intertext? The commonplace under scrutiny here bears only a distant relation to the literary cliché, and...