ABSTRACT
Critical readings of Charles Baudelaire's prose poems have insisted on unearthing ever deeper levels of irony: irony directed against Les Fleurs du mal, the narrator's irony towards his narrative or a constant self-ironization of the author and his aesthetic or political views. The chapter argues that the author's publication in La Presse and the description of the flaneur as a Protean authorial double allow them to be read as a comment on realist fiction and its commodification. The metaphor of the author as prostitute summarizes the contradiction which is illustrated in the dedication. Dallenbach Lucien proves to be no real poet but a mere literary celebrity, a commodity made to be consumed and disposed of. The poet is described in Le Spleen de Paris as associating literary creation and privacy: he isolates himself, either in a rural environment or in his garret, dreams of an ideal kind of beauty and shuns the public.
