Critical Fictions
Nerval's Les Illuminés

Meryl Tyers

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Research Monographs in French Studies 3

Legenda

2 December 1999  •  138pp

ISBN: 1-900755-15-7 (paperback)  •  RRP £75, $99, €85

ModernFrenchFiction

Nerval's Les Illuminés (1852) has often been seen as a problem text, and as a strange supplement to his masterpieces Les Chimères, Les Filles du feu and Aurélia. In this first book-length study, in English or French, of Les Illuminés, Meryl Tyers argues that it is a complex work of art in its own right and that its originality has been obscured by the tangled publishing history of its individual narratives. Tyers re-examines that history and provides a complete documentary basis for critical discussion of the work. She also traces the critical response from the earliest reviews through to the scholarly editions and studies of the present day. Tyers's own critical reading pays particular attention to 'La Bibliothèque de mon oncle', Nerval's intriguing preface. By investigating in detail those fragmentary structures and varying themes that may at first make the unity of Les Illuminés seem elusive, she is able to show that subtle integrative mechanisms are at work in a volume that deserves to be placed among the highest achievements of this incomparable poet.

Meryl Tyers is a Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow. She has written on nineteenth-century Bohemians and on modern French poetry.

Reviews:

  • ‘These six mavericks reflect aspects of Nerval himself, who thus becomes the implicit seventh in the series... Tyers's writing is as lively as it is bedazzling.’ — Roger Cardinal, Modern Language Review 96.1, 2001, 195-6 (full text online)
  • ‘As Meryl Tyers argues throughout this monograph, Nerval's Les Illuminés is one of his most intriguing but also most neglected works... Tyers examines the author's textual folie, an imaginary library in which the self loses itself.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 37.1, 2001, 115
  • ‘On retiendra aussi une hypothèse intéressante - et neuve, semblable-t-il - sur les sens du titre, Les Illuminés, que l'on peut rapprocher des 'livres illuminés', c'est-a-dire orné d'illuminations, ou d'enluminures.’ — Michel Brix, Studi francesi 130.1, 2000, 189

Bibliography entry:

Tyers, Meryl, Critical Fictions: Nerval's Les Illuminés, Research Monographs in French Studies, 3 (Cambridge: Legenda, 1999)

First footnote reference: 35 Meryl Tyers, Critical Fictions: Nerval's Les Illuminés, Research Monographs in French Studies, 3 (Cambridge: Legenda, 1999), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Tyers, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Tyers, Meryl. 1999. Critical Fictions: Nerval's Les Illuminés, Research Monographs in French Studies, 3 (Cambridge: Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Tyers 1999: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Tyers 1999: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

This Legenda title was first published by European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge.

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