Modernist Monstrosity in Rimbaud's Verse and Prose Poetry. Issue 2 (July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Harrow, Susan
• Is Part Of: Australian journal of French studies. Volume 55:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 138
• Page End: 153
• Publication Date: 2018-07
• Subjects: French literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Frans; Filologie; Littérature française -- Histoire et critique -- Périodiques; French literature; Criticism, interpretation, etc; Periodicals; 840.9
• DOI: 10.3828/AJFS.2018.14
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0004-9468

Abstract

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.