Benediction (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Charles Baudelaire
- First Published: 1857
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: Children, Suffering, Mothers, Parents and children, France or French people, Poetry or poets, God, Angels
The Poem
“Benediction” is composed of nineteen quatrains written in regular Alexandrine, or twelve-syllable, lines with an alternating abab rhyme scheme. Charles Baudelaire’s choice of this traditional verse form contrasts with his innovative use of imagery that was to inspire a new symbolic form of expression in French poetry.
While the poem uses the third person, the poet it describes clearly represents Baudelaire himself. The autobiographical elements, however, are generalized enough for the poet to represent at the same time the romantic archetype of the...
[The entire page is 1558 words long]
