SOURCE: "The 'Pseudo-Narrative' of Les Fleurs du Mal, in Orbis Litterarum, Vol. 46, No. 6, 1991, pp. 321-39.

In the following essay, Unwin argues that Les Fleurs du Mal conveys the suggestion of a story, which the critic calls a "pseudo-narrative."

'Le seul éloge que je sollicite pour ce livre est qu'on reconnaisse qu'il n'est pas un pur album et qu'il a un commencement et une fin.' Thus wrote Baudelaire to Vigny on sending him the second edition of Les Fleurs du mal. Reluctant students of poetry are indeed often relieved to discover that the collection can be approached in terms of its thematic development. This is not only a matter of recurrent images and symbols in the poems (for such unity is apparent in most poets' work.) Nor even is it what is now commonly referred to as the 'architecture' of the anthology, that is to say, the juxtapositions...