Cover of Selected Writings

Selected Writings

by Gerard de Nerval · 1855

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"Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855), a contemporary of Poe, De Quincey, Gogol and Heine, introduced into French literature a mode of writing rooted in German romanticism yet already recognizably modernist in its explorations of the uncertain borderlines between dream and reality, irony and madness, autobiography and fiction." "This selection of writings - the first such comprehensive gathering to appear in English - provides an overview of Nerval's work as a poet, belletrist, short-story writer and autobiographer. In addition to 'Aurelia', the memoir of his madness, 'Sylvie' (considered a 'masterpiece' by Proust), and the hermetic sonnets of 'The Chimeras', this volume includes Nerval's Doppelganger tales and experimental fictions. Selections from his correspondence demonstrate a lucid awareness of the strategies by which nineteenth-century psychiatry consigned his visionary imagination to the purgatory of mental illness."—Jacket.

Setting
1850s1850sMore like thisLess of this
Subject
philosophyphilosophyMore like thisLess of this
Audience
adult
Length
long · 406 pages
Form
poetrypoetryMore like thisLess of thisshort storiesshort storiesMore like thisLess of thisessaysessaysMore like thisLess of this

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