Jacques Rancière taught at the University of Paris VIII, France, from 1969 to 2000, occupying the Chair of Aesthetics and Politics from 1990 until his retirement. Steven Corcoran is a writer and translator living in Berlin. He has edited and/or translated several works by Jacques Rancière, including Dissensus (Continuum, 2010), and two works by Alain Badiou, Polemics (Verso, 2006) and Conditions (Continuum, 2008).

'[The author] seeks-through several intricate, close readings-to reinterpret the poet as one whose complexity lent light and lightness to a civilization deprived of spiritual and monarchic anchors.'-Choice Magazine

• Foreword \ 1. The Foam of Verse \ i. The White Preoccupation \ 2. The Poetics of Mystery \ i. The Terms of Mystery \ ii. The Scene of Dream \ iii. From Nothingness to Nothing \ iv. Method of Fiction \ v. The Fan's Poem \ 3. Hymns of the Spiritual Chorus \ i. The Religion of the Century \ ii. Two Theses on Divinity \ iii. The Poet and the Worker \ iv. Musical Religion \ v. Wagner the God: Poem, Music and Politics \ 4. The Duty of the Book \ i. The Poem as Thought: A Secular History \ ii. Music, Dance, Poem: The Circle of 'Mimesis' \ iii. The Authentic Page \ Selection of Texts \ Index.