Rimbaud

Rimbaud, Visions and Habitations by Edward J. Ahearn presents a comparative, thematically organized study that situates Arthur Rimbaud’s poetic production within a broad intellectual, literary, and cultural framework. Moving beyond formalist and post-structuralist approaches that have emphasized Rimbaud’s “unreadability” or radical fragmentation, Ahearn insists on a humanist reading that restores the thematic vitality of the work. He examines Rimbaud as a poet who speaks powerfully to enduring concerns: the persistence of childhood memory and loss, the longing for ecstatic realization, and the confrontation of consciousness with nature, city, and society. In this sense, Rimbaud becomes not only a radical innovator of poetic form but also an inheritor of Romantic legacies and a precursor to modernist engagements with language, psyche, and history.

The study is organized into three major chapters, each divided into sections that blend contextual comparison with close textual analysis. Chapter 1 considers Rimbaud’s treatment of childhood and origins in dialogue with Blake, Wordsworth, Hölderlin, and Freud, emphasizing the entwining of memory, vision, and rupture. Chapter 2 investigates ecstatic states in *Illuminations* such as “Barbare” and “Parade,” placing them alongside Blake, Nietzsche, and Romantic visionary traditions to illuminate Rimbaud’s pursuit of altered consciousness. Chapter 3 turns to Rimbaud’s representations of nature, city, and society, aligning them with Romantic poetics, Marxist theories of perception, and nineteenth-century debates on history and social life, thereby contributing to the elaboration of a Marxist interpretation of Rimbaud. For scholars of nineteenth-century literature, Romantic and post-Romantic traditions, and intellectual history, Ahearn’s book offers an integrative, interdisciplinary approach that situates Rimbaud at the nexus of poetics, psychology, and social thought.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.