Considered an attack on morality by 19th-century bourgeois society, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) stands at the crossroads of Romanticism, then in its twilight, and Symbolism, which would only emerge at the end of the century and which chose Baudelaire as its prestigious precursor. Writers found themselves confronted with a modernity that needed to be tamed in order to integrate it into art. But how could one create literature in an era of great upheaval that seemed vulgar to poets? Baudelaire's answer was both provocative and brilliant: let us poeticize vulgarity and popularize poetry. In other words, let us transform mud into gold. (Educational resource: Poetry from the 19th to the 21st century (extensive reading)
