ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the ebb and flow of English responses to French poetry, identifying moments when French influence was central to English innovation but also when English poets turned away from it, or rebelled against its prominence. It examines the role of translation before and during the blossoming of English interest in French poetry that took place in the 1890s. The book traces how varied and frequently overlooked threads of interest provided the platform for the translator-poets of the 1890s, using the examples of translations of Baudelaire and Hugo. It focuses on the increasingly prevalent conviction that the importance of French poetry was such that English responses to it must tackle it as a vital presence, an equal, and that other approaches were not only dated but damaging.