French Symbolist Poetry and the Idea of Music

'This finely tuned reinterpretation of the relationship of music to the "poetic" in works by important practitioners of lyric poetry, such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé, René Ghil, and Jean Royère, brings the period concept of "symbolism" alive. Acquisto writes with the clarity, conviction, and sensitivity that come from a profound knowledge of his subject.' Suzanne Nash, Professor of French, Princeton University ’...Acquisto makes a major contribution to a developing field of interdisciplinary criticism... The close readings of major texts from the poets' verse, theory and criticism are consistently stimulating, eschewing the mystificatory tendency of much scholarly writing on poetry's musicality in favour of sensible and sophisticated analysis. Indeed, Acquisto saves both his primary sources and critical apparatus from the dangers of over-familiarity by investing the field with significant new optics... This important study manages to maintain perfect clarity throughout while preserving the necessary difficulties and ambiguities of the material.’ Forum for Modern Languages ’Using well-chosen, music-dominated works for his podium, Acquisto conducts a verbal fantasia of texts and intertexts, where music and poetic language often emerge as each other's 'other'... In pursuit of his elegant and original hypothesis Acquisto takes his reader through his own choice of spaces... Acquisto is sympathetic and revealing of his authors and texts... stimulating and interesting.’ Nineteenth-Century French Studies ’Acquisto takes us for a fascinating ride into the tangled groves of symbolism. His style is professional, his language virtually clear of critical literary jargon. His introduction states his intention, his chapters develop his thesis, his concluding Chapter 5 tells us what we have learned--an old-fashioned form of argument we students of literary criticism see all too little of today.’ European Legacy