Charles Baudelaire: Poète Maudit (The Cursed Poet)

After learning the main ideas of the Decadent movement, students work in small groups to read and translate poems by the French poet Charles Baudelaire using basic etymology skills. They then read the accurate English translations to see how well they did. Using a graphic organizer, learners analyze the poems for Romantic literary elements and use their observations as a guide for class discussions and essays. They familiarize themselves with Charles Baudelaire's views and compare and contrast them with the views other Romantic writers.