Mallarme's "Divine Transposition"

Mallarme's reputation as a seminal thinker has steadily grown.

Yet, despite the proliferation of references to it, his literary theory has seldom been studied directly; the great theoretical articles of his later years have never been properly elucidated.

This book represents the first attempt to examine the later Mallarme's extraordinary and systematic literary idealism through a careful scrutiny of his own pronouncements on it.

The book makes selective use of the textual approaches of certain post-structuralist theorists, especially Derrida.

Many of their positions turn out to be fascinatingly similar to Mallarme's.

But there are also vital differences, which the second part of this study highlights, between Mallarme and the modern theorists, differences which help to explain not only Mallarm e's continuing elusiveness, but also the failure of modern literary theory to face the question which Mallarme always condidered fundamental: what is good poetry?