“Et quant à la vieille ironie, / L’Amour, je voudrais bien qu’on ne m’en parlât plus.” A deconstruction of the lyricism of love in Poëmes saturniens, Fêtes galantes, and Romances sans paroles

Sentimental literature and its forms marked Verlaine’s writing from his very first collections. Following in the footsteps of poets who have reshaped the forms and themes inherited from this tradition, Verlaine makes use of them in a way that goes beyond simple parody. These rewritings have a metapoetic dimension that helps us to understand the stakes involved in reshaping a tradition in this way: the poetry questions the place of the subject within intersubjective relationships and creates a new lyrical pact.