Performance in the Texts of Mallarme

Mallarmé is usually cast as the high priest of pure poetry, a writer sealed inside the page. Mary Lewis Shaw argues otherwise. Drawing on theories of ritual and performance, she shows how he saw music, dance and theatre as ideal languages of the body, ways of extending and celebrating the poem beyond print. She traces overlooked references to performance in four major works: Hérodiade, L'après-midi d'un faune, Igitur and Un coup de dés.

The later chapters turn to Le Livre, the vast unfinished book Mallarmé imagined being performed in a series of ritual celebrations. Shaw describes its structure and contents and presents it as a prototype of avant-garde performance, with clear links to twentieth-century art. A searching study for readers of French poetry, modernism and performance who suspect the purist Mallarmé is only half the story.