“Seeing Double is a truly original study of Baudelaire’s gaze, in his recording of dualities in what Walter Benjamin called his ‘photographic plates,’ without the kind of understanding that was to come later. Meltzer’s own wide reading and understanding compose an intricately-woven texture from the poet’s verse and prose poems, the influences upon them, and their reception by various interpreters of the modernist visions that Baudelaire prefigured.”

Mary Ann Caws, City University of New York

“Francoise Meltzer’s rich and suggestive study ranges widely over nineteenth-century thought and art to explore the bifurcated vision of modernity that Baudelaire’s work registers and into which the prose and verse poems lead the reader.”

Jonathan Culler, Cornell University

“Seeing Double brilliantly revisits the idea that modernity corresponded to a change in perception—or even sight itself—in response to the sensory overload caused by the rapid changes that transformed urban life and technological advances. Françoise Meltzer demonstrates with dazzling acuity that Charles Baudelaire recorded the clashing worlds of past and present as a ‘double vision’—the shattered register of a moral and conceptual contradiction. Perceptive and powerfully imaginative, this book will interest all scholars and students of nineteenth-century thought, as well as those investigating the philosophical questions that arose from the emergence of a newly technologized world.”

Marie-Hélène Huet, Princeton University

“In this beautifully written, remarkably clear book. . . Meltzer anchors the poet’s well known tensions and vacillations in the failed revolution of 1848. . . . A superb book, extensively researched, thoroughly absorbing. Essential.”

Choice

“In an imaginative, carefully argued reading of prose poem, verse poem, and essay, Meltzer demonstrates that, far from giving shape and some degree of coherence to the chaotic processes of modernity through his use of diametric contrasts, as many critics have assumed, Baudelaire’’s texts embody the conflicting worlds of past and present simultaneously. . . . In a way, Meltzer’s book performs two valuable functions: it dispels the myth that the poet’s frequent use of binary oppositions means that he had a clear appreciation of the contours of modernity; and it provides a new way of considering his complex, burdensome relationship with the nineteenth century.”

French Studies

“Seeing Double portrays the profound connection between the philosophical and aesthetic dilemmas in Baudelaire’s art and the historical moment in which he lived.” 

MLN

“Thoughtful and thought-provoking. . . . Armed with a sure knowledge of the French nineteenth century and with impressive scholarship, from Pichois, Lawler, and Mauron to Blin, Chambers, and Poulet, Meltzer offers many other delights: on Baudelaire’s obsession with original sin, on the work of the image in his poetry, on the prose ‘L’hologe’ and on ‘Le cygnet.’”

French Review