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Charles Baudelaire
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<p>Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a <a href="/facts/French_poetry/3a9wfUXd">French poet</a>, <a href="/facts/Essay/XBLChFK9">essayist</a>, <a href="/facts/Translator/2foI82so">translator</a> and <a href="/facts/Art_critic/MUslJQjy">art critic</a>. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the <a href="/facts/Romanticism/lfG31kE3">Romantics</a>, and are based on observations of real life. </p><p>His most famous work, a book of <a href="/facts/Lyric_poetry/KeBqhztP">lyric poetry</a> titled <i><a href="/facts/Les_Fleurs_du_mal/cllzrob2">Les Fleurs du mal</a></i> (<i>The Flowers of Evil</i>), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrialising Paris caused by <a href="/facts/Haussmann%2527s_renovation_of_Paris/CHVzVLcw">Haussmann's renovation of Paris</a> during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets including <a href="/facts/Paul_Verlaine/fg8JwKBa">Paul Verlaine</a>, <a href="/facts/Arthur_Rimbaud/puK3x45S">Arthur Rimbaud</a> and <a href="/facts/St%25C3%25A9phane_Mallarm%25C3%25A9/e4hFqIBw">Stéphane Mallarmé</a>. He coined the term <a href="/facts/Modernity/kkpjFrpr">modernity</a> (<i>modernité</i>) to designate the fleeting experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. <a href="/facts/Marshall_Berman/ymzVShpJ">Marshall Berman</a> has credited Baudelaire as being the first <a href="/facts/Modernism/AfPDL45X">Modernist</a>. </p>