Stendhal et Baudelaire: la dédicace `Aux Bourgeois.' La problématique d'un texte

In this dédicace Baudelaire speaks as a critic interested in winning to his point of view the bourgeois who can support the arts. Baudelaire appears here as one who read D'un nouveau complot contre les industriels, a pamphlet written some twenty years before by Stendhal. Like Baudelaire, Stendhal had felt the need to clarify his own attitude as an artist towards a changing society. Although Baudelaire adopts a stance that differs from Stendhal's, he nevertheless develops his arguments following the Stendhalian pattern. Accordingly, D'un nouveau complot is an indispensable tool for the understanding of the ambiguous dédicace. (In French) (EJ)