Théodore de Banville : constructing poetic value in nineteenth-century France / David Evans.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Evans, David, 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Banville, Théodore Faullain de, 1823-1891--Criticism and interpretation.

Banville, Théodore Faullain de.

Banville, Théodore Faullain de, 1823-1891.

French poetry--19th century--History and criticism.

French poetry.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

322 pages ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Legenda, 2014.

Summary:

Théodore de Banville (1823-91) was a prolific poet, dramatist, critic and prose fiction writer whose significant contribution to poetic and aesthetic debates in nineteenth-century France has long been overlooked. Despite his profound influence on major writers such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Mallarmé, Banville polarised critical opinion throughout his fifty-year career. While supporters championed him as a virtuoso of French verse, many critics dismissed his formal pyrotechnics, effervescent rhythms and extravagant rhymes as mere clowning. This book explores how Banville's remarkably coherent body of verse theory and practice, full of provocative energy and mischievous humour, shaped debates about poetic value and how to identify it during a period of aesthetic uncertainty. It features a detailed new reading of Banville's infamous and misunderstood Petit Traité de poésie française, together with collections such as Les Stalactites, Odes funambulesques, Les Exilés, Trente-six Ballades and Rondels, illuminated by wide reference to Banville's drama, prose and journalism. Evans elucidates not only nineteenth-century French verse theory and practice, but also a centuries-old tension between verse mechanisms and an unquantifiable, mysterious and elusive poeticity which emerges as a defining narratives of poetic value from the Middle Ages, via the Grands Rhétoriqueurs and Dada, to the experiments of the OuLiPo and beyond. Legenda is a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Music and the Mechanism: Theorizing the Unanalysable 29

2 The Silent Music of the Stars 87

3 The Poetics of (Sell-)Parody: Odes funambulesques 159

4 Bringing the Past to Life: Resuscitating fixed Forms and the National Canon, or la cheville glorifyée 202.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-310) and index.

ISBN:

9781909662346

1909662348

OCLC:

884744583