Baudelaire and the Art of Memory

This study is an examination of Baudelaire's art criticism and its relationship with his creative writing. It is the first book in English to treat in one volume the diverse aspects of the subject: the principal aesthetic ideas, the importance of Delacroix, Boudin, Meryon, Guys, and Manet, the essays on laughter and caricature, and the language and rhetoric of the Salons and other critical writings. The title reflects Baudelaire's conviction, whichemphasizes in relation to Delacroix, Daumier, Guys, and Wagner, that all art, whether it is painting, poetry or music, springs from the memory of the artist and speaks to the memory of the consumer of that art. This idea, exemplified in his own creative writing, extends to criticism itself, which is seen primarily asa phenomenon of recognition, and it is that sense of recognition that the author has sought to emphasize throughout.

Baudelaire and the Art of Memory is an exceptional and integrating work of scholarship, and a landmark in the field., In this book Hiddleston is at his best: the impressive erudition, the thoroughness of the documentary account, the focus and keenness of the argument, and the critical sensitivity to the Baudelairian text all mark this out as a work of genuine scholarship., The book offers us new perpectives on Baudelaire and caricature, as well as a close analysis of his theory of laughter., ... give(s) us Baudelaire in all his complexity and contradictions.

Was Lecturer in French, Leeds University, 1960-66Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, 1966