Situating Mallarme

Since his death just over a century ago, Stéphane Mallarmé has become a major figure in world literature. Over this period, Mallarmé criticism has tended to concentrate on two aspects of his work. Firstly on textual analysis in order to tackle the difficulty of his writing and secondly, thanks to the interest shown in him by figures such as Barthes, Derrida, Kristeva and Lacan, on his theoretical writings. Indeed, this particular part of his œuvre has somewhat dominated Mallarmé studies in the last thirty years. This book adopts a new approach by attempting to contextualise Mallarmé’s creative writing in terms of his relationships with other art forms, other writers and indeed other cultures. At the same time one of his own key obsessions with death is also reassessed, as is his relationship to the society of his time.
Mallarmé’s ambitious project was to exploit the potential of dance, music and painting as well as poetry in order to produce an artistic monument for the modern post-industrial age. Experts from all of these fields have therefore combined with literary specialists in order to adopt an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to Mallarmé’s work which marks a bold and exciting new departure in Mallarmé studies.