Abstract
Rimbaud's poetry and poetics contribute to the prodigious genealogy of monstrosity in Western literature and visual culture. This article argues that monster figures - whether the “familiar” terrors of iconographic tradition, horrible hybrids, or everyday bogeymen - are central to the transformative momentum of modernism in Rimbaud's verse and prose poetry. Monstrosity - multifariously embodied and endlessly morphing - generates social, cultural, and political fantasy, challenging orthodoxies, displacing structures, and empowering readers. Through the lacerating light it projects on forms of cultural constraint and aesthetic (self-) limitation, monstrosity is revealed as the force capable of re-visioning poetry and of deepening our equivocal sense of what it is to be human.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 138-153 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Australian Journal of French Studies |
Volume | 55 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2018 |
Keywords
- modernism
- monstrosity
- sensorium
- haptic
- acoustic
- kinaesthetic
- social fantasy