Baudelaire's Indian Summer: A Reading of `Les Bons Chiens'

"Baudelaire's Indian Summer" offers a close textual reading of "Les Bons Chiens," situating it within the appropriate historical and intertextual contexts. The analysis of the text focuses on questions such as the gift relationship between author and dedicatee (Joseph Stevens), on the image of the artist as performing dog, on dogs and the "doggy style" as expressions of modernity, and on the insights that the text affords into Baudelaire's final conception of the relationship between Artist and society. The critical approach used is essentially historical and biographical, though extensive use is made of De Certeau's distinction between "opposition" and "resistance." (RDEB)