Théodore De Banville
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.