Baudelaire's The Bohemia And The Bourgeois

In order to answer this question, a background setting of the period of time in which Baudelaire lived must be acknowledged. Baudelaire critiqued art in the mid 19th century where two opposed ideological worlds and value systems of art and society were formed: The Bohemia and the Bourgeois. These two groups in society were present in a period known as modernity. Calinescu describes these two value systems in his book called ‘The five faces of modernity’. The Bourgeois view of modernity was focused on being a product of scientific, technological and industrial progress and sweeping economic and social changes brought about by capitalism. The second (bohemia) was modernity as an aesthetic concept coming from the romantic beginnings inclined towards radical antibourgeois attitudes. It was disgusted with middle-class scale of values and expressed its disgust through diverse means such as rebellion, …show more content…
After the French revolution, various anti-bourgeois critics began to appear including Charles Baudelaire who demanded that art went under a process of aestheticization. These critics had an intensely polemical reaction against the expanding modernity of the middle class and they demanded that art be considered as art. It is not true to say that Baudelaire is either a member of the Bohemia or the Bourgeoisie but instead, by asking the public to change their views on art, Baudelaire offers a response to the dilemma between the stark contrasting views of these two value systems in modernity.

Firstly, “la philosophie du progress” was an ideology that believed that everything that was new was the best and it abdicated judgement meaning that change