This study of Baudelaire's writings applies the principles of socioanalysis to literary history and cultural studies.

Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; Part I. Poetics: 2. Correspondences versus beauty; 3. Spleen and evil; Part II. Psychopoetics: 4. Romantic temperament and 'Spleen and Ideal'; 5. Modernist imagination and the 'Tableaux Parisiens'; Part III. Sociopoetics: 6. Decoding and recoding in the prose poems; 7. The prose poem narrator; 8. Conclusion; Notes; Select bibliography; Index.