Walter Benjamin had an allegorical approach to analyse the vision of modernity inscribed in Baudelaire’s poetry. The allegorical mode proceeds by way of "the mortification of the literary work". There are allegorical similarities between Benjamin’s writings as a literary critic and Baudelaire’s poetical work. For Benjamin, the most productive implications of Baudelaire’s conception of modernity are to be found in the poems of The Flowers of Evil, not in Baudelaire’s critical essays. In contrast with Benjamin, Michel Foucault, who recognized the allegorical character of contemporary literature after Mallarmé, was not interested in the poetical work of Baudelaire. This lack of interest can be explained by Foucault’s refusal to have allegorical approach himself. So he loses, in the limits of "archaeology" of the sixties, the richest expression of modernity. Later, Foucault recognizes the importance of Baudelaire’s view of modernity, but still considers only his aesthetic reflections, not his poetry. For Benjamin, "in Baudelaire’s view of modernity, the theorie of modern art is the weakest point".
Modernity; Allegory; Allegorical criticism