“Angélique”, by Gérard de Nerval: the narrator in the face of reality

Abstract

This article analyzes the narrator of “Angélique” (1854), written by the French writer Gérard de Nerval (1808-1856), and aims to present some useful questions concerning a literary type of the French Romanticism: the “promeneur” (the walker). It should be observed, for example, if this narrator is in accord – or not – with the traditional narrator, understood as the one that employs the speech in the third person, the one who uses past tenses, and also the one who, by the use of verossimilitude or by the reference to concrete sources, attempts to convince the reader about the truth of the history conveyed by him and therefore by his own authority. It will be checked, by extension, the tendency of this narrator to mimesis, or, still, his refusal to it.

Keywords: French Romanticism. Gérard de Nerval. Narrator. Mimesis. Promeneur.