Jules Laforgue Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Anne Holmes

Critical Essay by Anne Holmes

SOURCE: "Les Complaints: 'Les refrains des rues'," in Jules Laforgue and Poetic Innovation, Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 30-49.

In the following essay, Holmes investigates the interplay of style, theme, and poetic technique in Laforgue 's Les complaintes.

the Idea of the Gi; the Idea of the complainte =~ Scomplainte

'Les vers pompeux sont embêtants', wrote André Gill, and by 1882 Laforgue agreed with him. Having distanced himself from the poets whom he had at first imitated, he found for his [second] volume a quite different model. It was surprisingly remote: the plaintive and burlesque complainte of the sixteenth century, but Laforgue coupled this with later folk-songs, down to the doggerel jingles of his day, a combination of traditional popular proverb and 'refrains des rues' of the contemporary world. The model was useful to him chiefly in two ways. Since the complainte was a popular genre, intended to be spoken or sung, Laforgue was released from traditional elevated verse, and solemn self-absorption became...
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