Mallarmé's Intratextual Æsthetics of Design

Mallarmé's attention to the interior design of collected volumes of his work is as important to his concept of poetry as the actual writing process. The poet as reader determines the inner groupings, revealing an aesthetics of order in his intratextual struggle against the restraints of poetic form. His preoccupation with selection, organization, and arrangement brings to light unsuspected intersections and relationships in his art of composition and calls into question approaches to the Mallarmé canon. (VAL)