Marceline Desbordes-Valmore is the only French woman poet of the nineteenth century to have enjoyed both an immediate and a durable success. She was a poet’s poet, with an admiring readership that included Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé. Enthusiastic essays were written about her, and she was widely anthologized. However, appreciation of her work was often based on inaccurate biographical information and preconceived notions about feminine poetry rather than aesthetic considerations. Hers was the “Poetry of the Cry”, embodying quintessential femininity (Barbey d’Aurevilly 148); a poetry that subordinated symbolic content to the natural, spontaneous expression of emotion and was therefore deficient in the artistry that guarantees permanence. In recent years, critical studies…
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Citation: Assa-Rosenblum, Sonia. "Oeuvres Poetiques". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 August 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32210, accessed 21 November 2024.]
