Banville, Théodore De

Banville, Théodore de (tāōdôr` də bäNvēl`), 1823–91, French poet. He was one of the group known as the Parnassians. His many volumes of verse, including Odes funambulesques (1857) and Les Exilés (1866), are characterized by expert technique.

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Banville, Théodore De 

Born Mar. 14, 1823, in Moulins, department of Allier; died Mar. 13, 1891, in Paris. French writer.

Banville’s verse collection Caryatids (1842) is romantic in character. After his association with the Parnassians, he published the collection of verses Stalactites (1846). In the collections Acrobatic Odes (1857) and New Acrobatic Odes (1869), he expresses a critical attitude toward the bourgeois world, but primarily on the aesthetic plane. Political motifs are present in his work (Prussian Idylls, 1871); the collection Parisian Cameos (1866–73) consists of verse portraits of the Paris Commune fighters. In the Little Treatise on French Poetry (1872) Banville tried to substantiate the principles of “art for art’s sake.”

WORKS

Poésies completes, vols. 1–3. Paris, 1878–79.
Critiques. Paris, 1917.

REFERENCES

Plekhanov. G. V. Literatura i estetika, vol. 1. Moscow, 1958. Pages 140, 143.
France, A. Literatura i zhizn’. Moscow-Leningrad, 1921. (Translated from French.)
France, A. “Teodor de-Banvil’.” Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 20. Moscow-Leningrad, 1931.