Jules Laforgue Research Paper

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Jules Laforgue was an early experimenter in free verse, “a stylistic innovation that became popular in the second half of the nineteenth century. His work was read by only a few French readers at the time of his death, but after his death, his reputation grew, to the point that he became a major influence on many twentieth-century English writers, including Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot” (enotes.com). “Today his poetry is highly regarded, but he is best known for the Derniers Vers (1890), a volume of poems published after his death that established his position as an initiator of free verse” (Jules was born on August of 1860, and from age 6, until he was sixteen, he lived with relatives at Tarbes, France. In 1881, he worked under Charles Ephrussi, …show more content…

By the end of the year, he had published several poems, and his work began to attract the attention of several well-known authors. Jules became the protégé of Paul Bourget, who was the editor of the La Vie Moderne. The following year, 1881, he attended a course of Hippolyte Taine, and developed a great interest for writing and poetry. Later that year, he worked as secretary for Charles Ephrussi a rich collector, one of the first collectors of Impressionist art. This direct influence of Impressionism on Laforge's early work, became an important topic in his later work. On August of 1881, Laforgue’s dad died. However, Laforgue did not attend his father’s funeral, for reasons unknown. That same year, he created a collection of poems titled, “The Tears of the Earth,” although not long after, abandoned this project. In this collection of poems, he first used “smoke-screening”, “an action or statement used to conceal actual plans or intentions”. (freedictionary.com). From November of 1881 to 1886, he lived in Berlin, as a sort of cultural counselor for Empress Augusta. During his stay in Berlin, he wrote L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune (his masterpiece). In 1886, he returned to France, and married Englishman Leah Lee. That same year, his poetry was published in La

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