Modern Languages Commons^™

Review Of Michael Bishop, Nineteenth-Century French Poetry, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

Michael Bishop has written extensively and well on some of the best of mid and late twentieth-century French poets--Char, Deguy, Jaccottet-and in this volume turns his attention to a thematic consideration of the major practitioners of the last century. The results are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, just about everyone is included whom one would expect to find (Lamartine, Vigny, Baudelaire, Hugo, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Laforgue; Desbordes-Valmore is present, Musset is not). Moreover, Bishop has read through the oeuvre of each poet, so his perceptive observations pertain not only to familiar poems but also to some that have …