Unfolding Mallarmé The Development of a Poetic Art

Unfolding Mallarme proposes new meanings in Mallarme's poetry and seeks to present the development of his poetic art as a successful search for linguistic and textual mastery. This development is systematically traced from Mallarme's earliest verse through to 'Un coup de Des', the radically innovative poem which was about to be published in a fine-art edition at the time of his sudden death in 1898. In a series of close readings, Roger Pearson examines Mallarme's poetic output up to and including the central 'Sonnet en yx', which is discussed both in its earliest version and within the context of 'Plusieurs sonnets'. These readings are followed by analyses of other major sonnets, of 'Prose (pour des Esseintes)', and of 'Un coup de Des' itself. The 'profound calculation' on which Mallarme claimed to have based this seemingly random text is here unfolded in all its structural and semantic complexity.