Editing Comte de Lautréamont (section)

==''Les Chants de Maldoror''==
{{Main|Les Chants de Maldoror}}
''Les Chants de Maldoror'' is based on a character called Maldoror, a figure of unrelenting evil who has forsaken [[God]] and mankind. 
The book combines a violent narrative with vivid and often surrealistic imagery.

The critic Alex De Jonge writes: "Lautréamont forces his readers to stop taking their world for granted. He shatters the complacent acceptance of the reality proposed by their cultural traditions and makes them see that reality for what it is: an unreal nightmare all the more hair-raising because the sleeper believes he is awake".<ref>Alex De Jonge, ''Nightmare Culture: Lautréamont and Les Chants de Maldoror'' (London: Secker and Warburg, 1973), p. 1.</ref>

There is a wealth of Lautréamont criticism, interpretation and analysis in [[French Language|French]] (including an esteemed biography by Jean-Jacques Lefrère), but little in English.

Lautréamont's writing has many bizarre scenes, vivid imagery and drastic shifts in tone and style. There is much "[[black humor]]"; De Jonge argues that Maldoror reads like "a sustained sick joke".<ref>De Jonge, p. 55.</ref>

[[File:Editions_Chants_de_Maldoror.png|thumb|upright|First edition of "Les Chants de Maldoror": the booklet, sold for 30 cents, is anonymous (August 1868).]]