“Le più pure regole dell’Arte”: Poe, Baudelaire e la genesi transnazionale del campo letterario

This article explores the relationship between Poe and Baudelaire from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological perspective. It argues that Poe’s role for the French author cannot be reduced to a mere psychological or artistic affinity but must be read within the specific literary trajectory Baudelaire was pursuing. Regarded from this point of view, Poe’s role for Baudelaire, totally unacknowledged by Bourdieu, is of basic importance to cast light, first, on the crucial importance of the practice of translation for the constitution of the literary field, and, second and more importantly, on the radically transnational nature of the literary field since its very inception.