Any where out of this verse: Baudelaire's prose poetics and the aestheticsof transgression

Baudelaire's prose poem form emerges from a productive tension between his verse and critical prose writings. This prose constitutes the textual enact ment of an "aesthetics of transgression" which, as articulated in Baudelair e's "Exposition universelle de 1855", locates beauty in the violation rathe r than application of aesthetic rules and norms. The article recasts Baudel aire's self-contradictory elements as a series of self-violations, performa tive instances of the "beau bizarre" he valorizes, a process demonstrated t hrough an integrated reading of the textual "interpenetrations" within and among "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe", "La Beaute", "Hymne a la beaute" and "La Chambre Double".