Presenting a new approach to the study of nineteenth-century French poetry, each essay in this collection focuses on the detailed organization of a single poem. Eleven essays, written from a wide range of critical and theoretical viewpoints, cover poets from Lamartine to Mallarmé and Laforgue. The method of close reading has been adopted in order to effect an introduction to the analysis of the "basics" of poetic language (sound, meter, syntax, etc.) and in order to explore and illustrate some of the claims and arguments about poetry arising from developments in modern literary theory. Theoretical positions are posed and tested in the terms of practical analysis and interpretation. Prendergast's introduction to the volume situates the essays in a series of general perspectives and contexts, and Clive Scott has provided an appendix on French versification.