Confronting the Unpoetical City: Arnold, Clough, and Baudelaire

Abstract

Uses Baudelaire’s work, which frequently celebrates city life, as a counterpoint to the poetry of Arnold and Clough, in which discussion of the city is avoided or offered in a decidedly negative light. Selects from a number of Arnold’s poems and prose works, as well as from poems by Clough, to demonstrate their conviction that the city is a stultifying force, especially when considering the sexual mores normally associated with city life.