Théodore de Banville is perhaps the most overlooked and underrated of the nineteenth-century French poets. His work stands at the major crossroads of Romanticism, Parnasse, and symbolism, and his influence on the evolution of poetic theory, aesthetics, and versification was significant. Among those with whom he had close associations, and where mutual cross-fertilization is manifest, are three of the major poets of modernity: Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé. His influence on Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Cros, Tristan Corbière, Germain Nouveau, and Jules Laforgue is acknowledged by critics and readily apparent. Many of the Parnassian poets proclaimed him their model and master; the long list includes the best known among them: Catulle Mendès, José-María De Heredia, Léon Dierx, Albert Glatigny, and Albert Mérat. He was a brilliant...