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This course delves into the study of Poe's incredible impact on French literature and art. Although many of his American contemporaries dismissed him as a crude writer, he gained a more reverential status on the other side of the Atlantic throughout the 19th century, being introduced by Baudelaire as one of the first "poète maudit" of the century. Through Baudelaire's translations, Poe's writings gained recognition and his literary sensibility was widely praised. He influenced several major literary and artistic movements amongst them the Symbolist poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry, the paintings of Edouard Manet and Paul Gauguin, but also the Fantastic in Maupassant's short stories and in Villiers de l'Isle-Adam writings. Moreover, Poe's influence is to be seen in the works of Jules Verne, the father of French science-fiction who admired Poe, in French Romanticism and in the detective stories of Emile Gaboriau. Through the prism of Poe's influence on French writers, this course allows a stimulating odyssey into various French works. Course taught in French.