Fantastic Tales (French Classics)

Enriched Edition (Preface, notes, chronology, and bibliography)

Vampire fables, stories of doubles and spells, this collection evokes in many ways a German tavern from Hoffmann's works, with its disturbing monsters and creaking ghosts. Indeed, it features the themes dear to the first Romantic generation, particularly its fascination with the fantastic from Scotland or Rhineland. However, Théophile Gautier imprints his own mark on this troubled realm of human reverie: each story receives an additional dose of anguish and the supernatural, reinforcing its fantastic dimension and adorning it with an extra layer of mystery.

One of Théophile Gautier's close acquaintances had claimed that "it was an understatement to say he was superstitious – he was superstition itself..." These Contes et récits fantastiques (Fantastic Tales and Stories) are the perfect illustration of this. Behind the bon vivant lies a man tormented by the dark figures of irrationality. In his own way, perhaps a precursor to Breton's Nadja, denouncing the vanity of "the conventional opposition of madness and reason that refuses to make room for the irrational."

This volume includes: La Cafetière, Omphale, La Morte amoureuse, La Chaîne d'or ou l'Amant partagé, Une nuit de Cléoptre, La Toison d'or, Le Pied de momie, Le Roi Candaule, Arria Marcella, Avatar, Jettatura.

Edited by Alain Buisine.

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