Task four: research Charles Baudelaire

Born 1821, died 1867

He lived and worked in France, mainly Paris

Unlike his romantic predecessors, he criticised romanticism and felt that there was beauty in the modern age

However, he is like the romantic poets because he led a friviolous lifestyle, spending lots of money on drink. He believed in the ‘art for art’s sake’ concept, however he felt personally that too much emphasis was put on art

His first and most famous collection of poems was the book The Flowers of Evil, published in 1857
the two themes that have been most heavily criticised are the themes of sex and death, which both caused a great outrage at the time

In 1841 his stepfather sent him on a sea voyage to Calcutta in India in the hope of stopping his dissolute habits

His poems were banned for over a hundred years due to their shocking content