Abstract EN:

Our study takes a look at the symbolism in French and English literature, represented by the personage of the fairy. Writings with a mythical theme were an obligatory rite of passage for the majority of poets, big and small, in the young generation of the Symbolist movement. Their works share common concerns; the desire to create an archaic memory of the fabulous, to construct an ideal image of the nation, to revisit poetic rapture through storytelling, to question the legitimacy of the image and to test the possibilities of the poetic voice. Far from being reduced to a symbol of escapism, the motif of the fairy represents hope, questioning and flaws in the Symbolist movement. We can see how, thanks to an enchanted topos, a fragile and dispersed movement succeeded in opening up the literary tool of the poem to a national and transnational dialogue between its different actors, and moreover creating for itself an identity and a collective history which compensates for the official history of the movement. Is