Abstract EN:

The question is whether the romantic genre had a specific type of fantastic fiction writing. The thesis focuses on a number of different works ranging from four of Ch. Nodier's novels, Smarra (1821), L’Histoire du roi de Bohème (1830), La Fée aux miettes (1832) and Inès de Las Sierras (1837), to the English gothic novels: The Monk by Lewis (1795) and Melmoth the wanderer by Maturin (1820), to two german books by Hoffmann: Die Elixiere des Teufels (1815-16) and Prinzessin Brambilla (1821). The first object of this study lies in the variety of archetypal representations of settings, beings or means of communication. Secondly the narratives structures and modes come under scruting as the reader's attention is drawn on the time-organization, the "mise en abyme" or inner duplication, forms of metalanguage and the search for new aesthetic criteria. Finally, what turns out to be the refusal of traditional moulds, the emergence of a new morality and the search for new meaningfulness can help provide an answer to the eventual question of what is really at stake. The romantic writers who wrote tales of fantasy were urged by a sense of freedom that authors were hankering after in the very act of writing. This is the reason why this genre reached its apex in the literature of fantasy or the fantastic, seen as a fleeting stage of achievement for the romantic quest. Cut off from the sphere of romanticism, they fell into a lifeless pattern.