Baudelaire Charles - Rethinking the concept of the grotesque: Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte

Rethinking the Concept of the Grotesque
Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte

LEGENDA

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STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Editorial Committee
Professor Stephen Bann, University of Bristol (Chairman)
Professor Duncan Large, University of Swansea
Dr Elinor Shaffer, School of Advanced Study, London
Managing Editor: Dr Graham Nelson

Studies in Comparative Literature are produced in close collaboration with the British Com parative Literature Association, and range widely across comparative and theoretical topics in literary and translation studies, accommodating research at the interface between different artistic media and between the humanities and the sciences.

PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES

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2. Hlderlin and the Dynamics of Translation, by Charlie Louth

3. Aeneas Takes the Metro: The Presence of Virgil in Twentieth-Century French Literature, by Fiona Cox

4. Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 17801955, by Peter D. Smith

5. Marguerite Yourcenar: Reading the Visual, by Nigel Saint

6. Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski, translated by Adam Czerniawski and with an introduction by Donald Davie

7. Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry, by Richard Serrano

8. The Anatomy of Laughter, edited by Toby Garfitt, Edith McMorran and Jane Taylor

9. Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de sicle, by Richard Hibbitt

10. The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In Pursuit of Hesitation, by Claire Whitehead

11. Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece, by Dimitris Papanikolaou

12. Wanderers Across Language: Exile in Irish and Polish Literature of the Twentieth Century, by Kinga Olszewska

13. Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 17831830, by Alison E. Martin

14. Henry James and the Second Empire, by Angus Wrenn

15. Platonic Coleridge, by James Vigus

16. Imagining Jewish Art, by Aaron Rosen

17. Alienation and Theatricality: Diderot after Brecht, by Phoebe von Held

18. Turning into Sterne: Viktor Shklovskii and Literary Reception, by Emily Finer

19. Yeats and Pessoa: Parallel Poetic Styles, by Patricia McNeill

20. Aestheticism and the Philosophy of Death: Walter Pater and Post-Hegelianism, by Giles Whiteley

21. Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy, by Sibylle Erle

22. Rethinking the Concept of the Grotesque: Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte, by Shun-Liang Chao

Seer aerdige grotissen dienstich, 1644. Trustees of the British Museum

Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte

Shun-Liang Chao

First published 2010

Published by the
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Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge

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Modern Humanities Research Association and 2010

ISBN 978-1-906540-82-1 (hbk)

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TO MY PARENTS AND THE MEMORY OF TZE-MING (TRISTE) HU

This book would not have been possible without the financial support of University College London, the Overseas Research Student (ORS) Awards Scheme, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. I would like warmly to thank Timothy Mathews, who guided this project through to completion with the utmost enthusiasm, and Tim Langley for his careful and thoughtful comments on the first draft of this book. I would also like to thank Marshall Grossman at the University of Maryland, with whom I undertook an independent study of Donne, Herbert, and Crashaw, and thus first encountered the idea of the grotesque. I am especially grateful to Elinor Shaffer (FBA), who provided invaluable advice on the revision of this book. I must also express my gratitude to Graham Nelson at Legenda for his generous help, and to Nigel Hope for his skilled copy-editing. My special thanks go to Lyn M. Lawrence for his patience in teaching me to be a good writer, and to teachers and friends who have offered encouragement and sincere friendship throughout the completion of this book.