Dream Cities

This book considers how the utopian vision of the city in turn came to impinge on prose writing by poets: in Saint-Simonian literature, and in texts by Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. Introduction 1. From Le Livre nouveau to 'la ville nouvelle': Elements of a Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City 2. Crayonnons à la hâte': The Modern Urban in the Journalistic Prose of Théophile Gautier 3. Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris: Rhapsodie and 'le vertige senti dans les grandes villes' 4. Rhetorics of Transformation and Community in Rimbaud's Illuminations 5. Conclusion