Nineteenth-century French poetry would not appear to present anything comparable to the uses of knowledge discourse in the contemporary novel. This book offers the contrasting view that at its core, Parnassian poetry was poetologically and poetically connected to science. It reveals the ways that Parnassian poetry engaged in a battle with the novel for literary dominance after the Romantic era.

Henning Hufnagel, Universität Zürich, Schweiz.