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Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880): two young men from wealthy families, two opponents of bourgeois education, two aborted social callings, two terminal illnesses, two resounding failures before literary institutions, two adventures in love, two satanic fascinations, two notorious literary trials, two conceptions of the craft of writing, two approaches to realism, two criticisms of romantic art, two models of poetic inspiration, two aesthetics of language, two cults of Beauty, all for one and a unique literature. This seminar will be devoted to the literary life of two writers whose canon for more than a century has occupied a central place of importance in contemporary literary criticism. It will be our task to place their work in perspective within the context of the rise of modernism, which is to say, the new status of literature as of the year 1857. We shall endeavor, thus, to discern the authenticity of the creative relationship of each artist with himself and subsequently with others. The point will be to foreground three fundamental principles that will aid in grasping the evolution of the literary world under the Second Empire and under the Third Republic: literary history, writing and the elevation of the writer (Bénichou). Our work will be based on three or four texts by Baudelaire and Flaubert, it being understood that additional works of criticism will illuminate the discussion of these texts.