Le procès du « Dante français » Baudelaire, ou l’Enfer sans Vita Nova

What is the value of the Dantesque commendation invented to defend the immorality of Baudelaire? This article shows that the nineteenth-century criticism that calls him the “French Dante” deplores the fact that he could only be a perversion of the Catholic and angelic Dante. In contrast with this portrait, Baudelaire painted a dark vision of Dante, going as far as to detect the grip of Hell on the Vita Nova. The Baudelairean Beatrice, paradoxically idealized for her cruelty, becomes an allegory of the destructive power of love.