L’«espace balsamique» dans le roman Paul et Virginie de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
The “balsamic space” in the novel Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

Summary/Abstract: A new sensitivity appears in the eighteenth century, which pushes the elites, maddened by the urban miasma, to seek a purer atmosphere in the parks or the mountains near lakes or the sea, even in the utopias that sometimes gather all. In the novel Paul et Virginie (1788) by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the Parisian metropolis and the tropical island are opposed not only as morality (corruption vs vertu), but also as space (malodorous vs “balsamic”).

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