Intratextual Baudelaire: The Sequential Fabric of the
Fleurs du mal
and
Spleen de Paris by Randolph Paul Runyon provides a new and provocative answer to the question that has intrigued readers for years: did the poet arrange the
in a meaningful order? Runyon believes so, but not in the way most have conceived the question.
Barbey d’Aurevilly’s claim that there was a “secret architecture” hidden in the
Fleurs
has long misled scholars by leading them to look for some overarching hierarchical organization, when they should have been looking for how the poems actually fit together, each to each, in the sequential fabric of the text. This is what Runyon has done, in a meticulous reading of every poem and its place in the sequence.
Intratextual Baudelaire
provides the most thorough analysis available of the textual changes Baudelaire made between the first and second editions and shows why he made them: so that the sequential structure would be preserved despite the addition of new poems and the deletion of those judged obscene.
Extending his analysis to the
Spleen de Paris
with the same attention to detail and awareness of textual changes, Runyon shows that Baudelaire’s prose-poem collection displays the same rigorous sequential structure. Both collections are revealed as marvels of self-referential intratextuality. Whether one agrees with Runyon or not,
will certainly generate discussion among French studies scholars.