Rappresentare la modernità: aura, choc e allegoria nello sguardo del flâneur

The aim of the article is to propose a re-interpretation of the nexus «representationmodernity» as it comes to manifestation, in an exemplary way, through the Baudelairian figure of the flâneur. In this perspective, and assuming the reading offered by Walter Benjamin as a privileged referent of the investigation, the article focuses on a constellation of themes and problems, emerging both from Baudelaire’s artistic production – and in particular from the lyric The Swan – and from his theoretical reflection, within which particular emphasis is given: 1) to the experience of «shock»; 2) to the polyvalence of the notion of «aura»; 3) to the motif of the «fantasque escrime» put into practice, in the Paris of the XIX Century, by the artist-flâneur; 4) to the conceptual figure of «allegory», here included above all as a device for the production of the possible.