Les Apparitions du château de Tarabel, ou Le Protecteur invisible [The Apparitions of Tarabel Castle, or the Invisible Protector], a novel published by Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon (1786–1864) in 1822, tells the story of Count Eugène de Melorenne who, in 1795, in the context of the War in the Vendée, faces not only many difficult political choices but also various complications as far as his love life is concerned. The aim of this article is to analyze the overwhelming influence of politics and history on nearly all the aspects of this novel and to examine whether or not the book fits well into the generic framework of the traditional Gothic novel.

In this essay we intend to emphasize first the subjective way of Victor Hugo in expressing his own thoughts, ideas, visual impressions and feelings within the introductory chapter of this book, entitled “The Archipelago of the Channel”. Then, we intend to show the subjective manner of the narrator in constructing Gilliatt, the main character of the proper novel. In this undertaking, the narrator seems to be objective, while, in fact, he is highly subjective, presenting the hero from an outside view point, and defining his temper and disposition by a collection of gossips and slanders on Gilliatt, from the narrow and xenophobe perspective of his fellow-citizens. The subjectivity of both the author and the narrator is disconcerting for the reader, who should not judge superficially this book, but rather try to find, between the lines, its different values and significations, which are in perfect accord with Victor Hugo’s philosophical and aesthetic conception, based upon the harmony of contraries, upon the coexistence of good and evil, sublime and grotesque, light and darkness.

The article analyzes Memoires en vrac by Jean Ajalbert, a forgotten poet and writer at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, in the context of the functioning and creation of memory about the fin de siècle era, particularly the decade of Symbolism 1880-1890. In the process of resurrecting of the past, affective memory in Ricœure’s approach turns out to be important, enabling the author to combine autobiography with a testimony about the era in which he was to play an important role alongside masters (Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Mallarmé…) and (un)famous writers and artists. Thanks to the impressive nature of his writing and discontinuous style, Ajalbert composed a hybrid text in which he included fragments of letters, symbolist poems and his own works. The author’s desire to create a personal myth at the intersection of aesthetics allowed him to show non-obvious connections between symbolism and naturalism.

The paper argues that the first and second Journaliers, a sort of diary kept by Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904), a Suisse writer and traveler of Russian origins, may be considered as autobiogeographical. The term autobiogeography has been coined at the beginning of the 21st century and describes the interactions between the autobiographical self and geography, or space. The autobiogeographical character of two first Journaliers is presented in three parts. The first focuses on the specificity of the text and its relationship with geography. The second talks about the links between particular cities and the Eberhardtian self. The third depicts the relationships between the self and the landscape: not only does it show how geography influences the self, but also what the impact of the self is on the way we look at the space.

Colette et Louis Pergaud représentent des styles très différents, ils varient aussi par la thématique de leurs ouvrages. Il est pourtant un point qui les rapproche. Ils s’unissent dans leur amour pour les animaux et la volonté de les peindre d’une manière véridique. Ce désir en cache très certainement un autre, celui d’éduquer le public à une plus grande compréhension du monde animal. Pour ce faire, ils mettent sur scène des humains dont le comportement face aux animaux diffère radicalement. En effet, tandis que les uns montrent une profonde empathie pour les animaux, les autres s’en méfient voire leur vouent de la haine. La jalousie y tient également une place importante. La présente étude se concentre sur tous les éléments susmentionnés, afin de cerner les manières dont Colette et Pergaud se saisissent de la thématique animale pour la lier à des sujets de portée universelle et profondément humaniste. Le rapport de l’humain au non-humain est, chez ces précurseurs de l’écosensibilité, une mesure de leur valeur, et ils atteignent de la sorte deux objectifs : éveiller les consciences de leurs contemporains et jeter une nouvelle lumière sur les relations entre les espèces.

Francis Poictevin was a French author of decadent and symbolist inspiration. His poetic prose
is diaristic and impressionistic, and draws richly on the natural world, which finds its particular realisation in Paysages (1888). Based on the guidelines of an ecologically engaged literary text as defined by Lawrence Buell, the current research aims to present the author’s vision of the environment and to answer the question of the autonomy of the nature depicted. The human-environmental relationship, the motive of the passage of time and the changeability of the seasons, as well as the eco-sensitivity of the author are taken into account. Poictevin, by giving his work the form of a collage, presents a natural world full of active actors, weighing up the ecosystem full of dependencies.

Convaincus que l’univers matériel n’est qu’une prison, que toute évasion finit par l’échec, les héros des romans français de la fin du XIX^e siècle tombent dans le piège de l’impuissance. Envahis par le pessimisme, les protagonistes ne renoncent pas à la lutte : ils cherchent le salut dans l’art, la névrose, l’occultisme en inventant de subtils subterfuges pour tromper les sens d’agréables illusions. Dans notre étude nous essayerons de montrer comment les héros de Huysmans, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam et Gourmont relèvent ce défi, avec ou sans succès, au péril même de leur équilibre physique et mental. Par mépris d’une hostilité ambiante, les protagonistes transforment l’imagination en une force supérieure capable de dominer le réel. Contraints à cette recherche désespérée du nouveau, du rare, de l’étrange, les romanciers tentent de vaincre les chimères de l’impuissance.

While he was young, Emile Zola regarded himself as a poet and wrote several thousand lines of poetry. Then, having turned definitely to prose, he judged his poetry poor and undistinguished. Therefore, his poems have never been  edited, except some fragments published by his friend Paul 
Alexis in 1882. The paper analyzes some motives (cyclic structure, the ideal of feminine beauty and of scenery, attitude towards God) appearing in Zola’s poetry in order to prove they recur in the writer’s novels, especially in the Rougon-Macquart cycle. Thus, the poems by young Zola
may be regarded as a prelude to his prose works.