L’essayisme nervalien Étude d’une déviation

This article seeks to examine the category of the essay used by criticism of the time to qualify Nerval’s writing, and which Nerval himself highlights in Les Nuits d’octobre. Based on a reading of the text from 1852, this study unravels the resonances which, deriving from the recent postulates of realism as much as from the ludicrous hypotheses of fantasy, underlie Nerval’s essay-writing in its most experimental and pluralist dimensions.