Parodie et pastiche dans l’œuvre poétique de Théodore de Banville par Laura Hernikat Schaller (review)

Laura Hernikat Schaller, the author of this engaging study of pastiche and parody in Banville, makes a broad distinction between the terms by saying that pastiche is the imitation of the style of certain texts and parody is the transformation of a given text. She defines the rehabilitation of the traditional fixed-form poems by Banville as pastiche de genre, recalling that Banville names his models by linking his dizains to Clément Marot, his rondels to Charles d’Orléans, and his ballades to François Villon. As Banville, however, does not associate the rondeaux with Vincent Voiture, they do not receive here the attention that they deserve. In Les Cariatides they are such a skilful imitation of his manner that they are an outstanding example of the strict definition of pastiche. In the Odes funambulesques Banville includes rondeaux that are pastiche as well as parody. Voiture’s poems are ingenious tributes to beautiful women; Banville imitates him when he praises the actress Mademoiselle Page, for example, by using discrete homophonous rhymes for her name with page (paper) and page (attendant), which emphasize her beauty. In his parodies he transforms the model by writing of male contemporaries, ridiculing them not only by allusion to their activity but also by the use of rhyme. So Arsène Houssaye is mocked for his pastoral verse by being likened to a shepherd and by the choice of the rhymes for both his family name and his given name. In general, the targets of his parody are the theatres and personalities well known to his readers at the time of writing. In later editions a commentary is added to illuminate the allusions. The pieces that are still amusing today are those that need little commentary because the reader recognizes the poem that Banville transforms or the performance on which he comments. The best examples of the nouvelle langue comique versifiée he sought to create can thus be found in a parody of La Tristesse d’Olympio, ‘poème emblématique du Romantisme français’ (p. 253), which lampoons a hapless politician of the Second Empire who was not invited to an official ball. Even though the individual is long since forgotten, the satire is effective because the hypotext is well known. The piece on the bataille d’Hernani, which is not mentioned, is to my mind a worthy example of Banville’s art. Hernikat Schaller emphasizes the two cultural changes that created the conditions for Banville’s parodies: that Hugo had become widely read and that his work provided a model for parody for many writers; and the development of the press. She mentions the diversity of the periodicals that published verse, of which the satirical press is the most pertinent. The title Le Tintamarre indicates the tone of a publication in which Banville and Baudelaire published a parody of a trisyllabic (!) sonnet by the Hugo acolyte Auguste Vacquerie. In the valuable appendices several Banville texts are set beside their model; there is also a table of all the Banville poems relevant to pastiche and parody and a bibliography of no fewer than thirty pages.