Twenty-First-Century Symbolism

Reviews / Votes

'This excellent monograph will find a broad, enthusiastic readership in the fields of French literature and critical theory, encompassing a wide variety of areas such as ecocriticism, phenomenology, affect, and various branches of the digital humanities. The field of nineteenth-century French literature will benefit enormously from this study, which significantly refreshes the way in which we approach well-known texts (too well-known, one often feels) using ambitious, cutting-edge critical lenses.' David Evans, University of St Andrews 'What Luebecker provides us with is a new set of readings that are additive-we learn more about the three poets, rather than necessarily needing to rethink or revise what we knew about them already. Verlaine may be thought of, variously, as an impressionist or musical poet, but here Luebecker exposes his environmental activist side. Similarly, Baudelaire may be predominantly known as the poet of modernity, but here Luebecker reveals his more ecological dimensions... This study will be of significant interest to both specialists of nineteenth-century literature and critical theorists exploring new modes of conceptualizing the literary in relation to environmental debate.' Helen Abbott, Modern & Contemporary France 'In this eloquent book, Nikolaj Luebecker provides a fresh way of reading three of the major poets of nineteenth-century France... Luebecker, true to the ecological and non-anthropocentric ethos of the book, stays in the background, letting the texts speak among themselves, and yet he subtly performs operations, like Mallarme, that trouble our critical certainties.' Patrick Bray, French Studies 'Nikolaj Luebecker's monograph does not present itself as a study in ecocriticism, yet at every turn it implicitly underscores the ecological basis of contemporary, non-anthropocentric understandings of humans' relations with the world. In a study of impressive intellectual range, encompassing contemporary scholarship on colour categorization, cybernetics, theories of media and affect, and other areas, Luebecker demonstrates how symbolist writing draws close to key preoccupations of the present day... successive chapters communicate an abiding sense of poetry as a practice, one with the capacity to "[draw] us into-and mak[e] us participate in-the crystallization of an environment" (p. 28) in ways that emphasize aspects of becoming, interplay, and hybridization. Among the important contributions that this book will make to literary studies and critical theory, then, is that it offers a distinctly fluid, open kind of contextualization, situating poetry and poetic criticism, to paraphrase the language of the final chapter on Mallarme, "as part of a larger data ecology" (p. 175).' Greg Kerr, Modern Language Review 'Twenty-First Century Symbolism: Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarme is a fascinating text, which rereads selected symbolist texts in dialogue with contemporary critical theories. This ambitious project is a success... Luebecker offers a fresh perspective on poems about which we may have thought all had been said.' Translated from French: 'Twenty-First Century Symbolism: Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarme est un texte fascinantqui offre une relecture de certains textes symbolistes a la lumiere des theories dumoment. Cet ambitieux projet est reussi... Luebecker offre uneperspective rafraichissante sur des poemes sur lesquels on pensait peut-etre avoirdeja tout dit.' Eloise Sureau, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 'Apart from being a compelling read, Twenty-First-Century Symbolism: Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarme is a must for those who believe in the never-ending enriching power of poetry, and think, at the same time, that all the arts exist to help us living up to the encounters and challenges the world offers us at every turn.' Francesco Sticchi, **Modernism/modernity**