L’Expérience onirique dans Cauchemar de Théophile Gautier et Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Oneiric Experience in Cauchemar by Théophile Gautier and Joris-Karl Huysmans

Summary/Abstract: Théophile Gautier and Joris-Karl Huysmans are two 19th-century writers who wrote about dreams as well as nightmares. This article highlights the different characteristics of the two writers’ writing about nightmares by promoting a comparative approach that, far from relying on a simple comparison between them, rather explores the thematic and formal foundations of this writing. Starting with two poems entitled “Nightmare”, we attempt to uncover the secrets of the reconstruction of the nightmare, which transforms from a sign of Gautier’s and Huysmans’s anxieties into a framework conducive to fantastical creation and spiritual aspiration in the contemporary world, favoring a distinguished scriptural poetic style.

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