This essay considers 'modern' poetry and music as interrelated signifying practices in the works of Charles Baudelaire and Theodor Adorno through a focus on their approach to understanding dissonance. For Baudelaire, dissonance depends on consonance in order to be perceived at all, a fact which allows us to read the modern not just in terms of a break with the past but also as dependent on it. This essay demonstrates the mutually constitutive nature of consonance and dissonance by placing Baudelaire (...) and Adorno’s writings on dissonance, with reference to the music of Beethoven, into a constellation that allows for insight into the function of ‘modern’ dissonance. It argues that Baudelaire’s approach is both new and dependent on long-standing understandings of dissonance and harmony, and that Adorno’s writings, in conjunction with Baudelaire’s, can make us attentive to the dissonance that operates within harmony rather than standing opposed to it. (shrink)

Why have poets played such an important role for contemporary philosophers? How can poetry link philosophy and political theory? How do formal considerations intersect with philosophical approaches? These essays seek to establish a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Each essay contributes to our understanding of the relationships between theory and lived experience while providing new insight into important poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Victor Hugo, and others. The broad range of metaphysical, phenomenological, aesthetic, and ethical approaches announce important (...) new paths for a reinvigorated study of lyric poetry in the decades to come. (shrink)