Mallarmé, Manet and Redon:Visual and Aural Signs and the Generation of Meaning

This study, first published in 1986, is an examination of the many facets of Mallarmés relationship to the visual arts. Dr Florence proceeds by analysing Mallarmés writing on painting and literature, and its bearing on specific paintings, lithographs, and poems. These analyses reveal and define important common structures and innovatory developments, the coherence of which is masked by conventional histories of art. A new relationship is revealed between the word and the image, which has significant implications for an understanding of the self and the world in these texts. The book is particularly original in two respects: first, it shows how developments in verbal and visual innovation are interdependent in Mallarmés work; second, it integrates hitherto discrete traditions of the avant-garde in painting to present a new perspective on the history of modernism.