This book offers a theoretically original literary and political analysis of Gérard de Nerval’s writings in verse and in prose. Celebrated for his sonnet sequence, Les Chimères, Nerval lived through some of the most significant events of nineteenth-century France, from the fall of Napoleon I to the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and the establishment of the Second Empire. Not unproblematically Romantic, Parnassian, or Symbolist – but engaged with or anticipating many of the concerns of these literary currents – Nerval was an important influence on later poets and writers, including Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, André Breton, and T.S. Eliot. Yet Nerval is less well known, at least in the English-speaking world, for the substance of his writing than for his role as a character in apocryphal tales. This book is a reappraisal of Nerval’s writings, focusing on his correspondence, his engagement with the press, and his travel writings. Nerval’s enigmatic comments on political figures and events provide points of departure for a deeper investigation of the subtle ways in which his poetics is political, exploring how his activities as a writer intersect with the dynamics of mid-nineteenth-century politics and society.

Sarah Gubbins is a Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Dundee, Scotland. She is a specialist in French poetry of the mid-nineteenth century and in the prose writing of poets of that period.