Between Baudelaire and Mallarmé

Helen Abbott examines the verse and prose poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarmé, together with their critical writings, to address how their attitudes towards the performance practice of poetry influenced the future of both poetry and music. Abbott considers the meaning of 'voice' in terms of rhetoric, the human body, exchange, and music, showing that Baudelaire and Mallarmé exploit the complexity and instability of voice to propose a new aesthetic situating poetry between conversation and music.