{"product_id":"the-writer-of-modern-life-essays-on-charles-baudelaire","title":"The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire","description":"\u003cp\u003eWalter Benjamins essays on the great French lyric poet Charles Baudelaire revolutionized not just the way we think about Baudelaire  but our understanding of modernity and modernism as well. In these essays  Benjamin challenges the image of Baudelaire as late-Romantic dreamer  and evokes instead the modern poet caught in a life-or-death struggle with the forces of the urban commodity capitalism that had emerged in Paris around 1850. The Baudelaire who steps forth from these pages is the flneur who affixes images as he strolls through mercantile Paris  the ragpicker who collects urban detritus only to turn it into poetry  the modern hero willing to be marked by modern life in its contradictions and paradoxes. He is in every instance the modern artist forced to commodify his literary production: \"Baudelaire knew how it stood with the poet: as a flneur he went to the market; to look it over  as he thought  but in reality to find a buyer.\" Benjamin reveals Baudelaire as a social poet of the very first rank.  The introduction to this volume presents each of Benjamins essays on Baudelaire in chronological order. The introduction  intended for an undergraduate audience  aims to articulate and analyze the major motifs and problems in these essays  and to reveal the relationship between the essays and Benjamins other central statements on literature  its criticism  and its relation to the society that produces it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946463162421,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674022874","price":46.45,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674022874.jpg?v=1769950553","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-writer-of-modern-life-essays-on-charles-baudelaire","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}