Œuvres poétiques complètes, vol. IX by Théodore de Banville

Abstract

MLR, 105.1, 2010 249 Church's inflexiblemodel of obedient femininity prove thatmother, daughter, and spouse are but three of the infinitelyvaried and complex visions ofwomanhood which these writers have to offer.This well-documented bilingual anthology, with a wide range of translation styles, is a first-ratepedagogical tool. Throughout, Schultz directs the reader towards the finest recent scholarship in the field (Adri anna Paliyenko, Aimee Boutin, Wendy Greenberg), and the current resurgence of academic interest in these writers suggests that themuch-needed reconsideration of the nineteenth-century canon, with all the benefits thatbrings to both teaching and research, iswell underway. University of St Andrews David Evans CEuvres poetiques completes, vol. ix. By Theodore de Banville. Ed. by Peter J.Edwards and Peter S. Hambly. Paris: Champion. 2009. 414 pp. 75. ISBN 978-2-7453-1876-3. Although substantial scholarly interest has eluded him, Banville's poetry inspired considerable debate during the nineteenth century, as the documents gathered here amply attest. Following a dozen minor poems discovered since the recent eight-volume critical edition of his complete poetic works, the editors present 350 pages of contemporary critical responses to Banville. As well as individual reviews of each of his seventeen verse collections bar only Amethystes and Roses de Noel, this includes a wide selection of vues d'ensemble, including well-known essays by Baudelaire (1861) and Mallarme (1892), an excerpt from Gautier's Rapport sur leprogres des lettres (1868), a long study by Camille Mauclair, and articles by, among others, Verlaine, Marcel Schwob, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Anatole France, and, inEnglish, Robert Louis Stevenson. It is strikinghow soon the received ideas about Banville's poetry crystallize, and how tenacious they remain once voiced. Almost all the critics exploit the familiar caricatures?Banville as virtuoso, improviser, ac robat, clown, Pierrot, pedlar of absurdly inventive rhyme, audacious enjambments, and empty doggerel?and the debate around laforme et lefond quickly assumes centre stage, with many, such as Jules Janin, arguing that Banville's extravagant formal contortions reduce poetry to amere word-game devoid of ideas: 'Qa ne veut rien dire, mais ca sonne bien!' (p. 43). One almost senses, given how frequently these themes recur in Banville's prefaces, prose, and theatre, that these critical responses shaped his own vision of his work, to the extent that his entire poetics might be seen as amischievous and provocative challenge to,and repudiation of,his critics. These are entertaining reviews, from thehyperbolic dithyrambs ofBanville's defenders to the ebullient outrage of his detractors, notably Jules Lemaitre, who thinks so littleof Banville's verse theory and practice that, in order better to refute it,he engages with it inminute detail. Moreover, these texts are of considerable interestbeyond the poet himself, since the remarkably coherent manner inwhich the Banville myth is constructed between diverse critical voices illuminates both the mechanisms of nineteenth-century literary criticism and its anxieties over 250 Reviews aesthetic values such as: the relationship between art, the canon, and a national literary identity in the lightof Franco-Prussian tensions; sincerity,authenticity, and genius versus influence, imitation, and pastiche; the hesitations between artistic theory and practice, myth and modernity, idealism and materialism; the overlaps between sculpture, painting, music, and poetry; the antagonism between an elitist, staunchly apolitical art and bourgeois society; and the limits of teaching, analysis, and criticism itself.Given thatmany of these have emerged as central themes in studies of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, andMallarme in recent years, this excellent critical edition deserves to inspire fresh research on Banville's verse, theatre, and prose, since itreveals just how much he can contribute to our understanding of the central enjeux of nineteenth-century French literature. University of St Andrews David Evans Les 'Mardis' de Stephane Mallarme: mythes et realties. By Gordon Millan. Saint Genouph: Nizet. 2008. 134 pp. 13.50. ISBN 978-2-7078-1305-3. The regular Tuesday meetings at the Rue de Rome apartment that Stephane Mal larme occupied from 1875 until his death in 1898 have taken on amythical status over theyears, with Mallarme emerging as a figurewho prepared his conversations about literature and the arts, and delivered them in a masterful manner. Gordon Millan sets out to unpack a number of assumptions about...