Laura Smith 
The Treatment of Identity in Nerval’s ‘Les Chimeres’ [PDF ebook] 
With Particular Attention to Poetic Technique

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject French Studies — Literature, grade: 72 (A), University of Birmingham, course: BA Modern Languages, language: English, abstract: Nerval’s work is famously difficult to categorise. Was he a romantic? A surrealist? Or something else?
The collection of poems ‘Les Chimères’ could certainly be said to express elements of all of the above and perhaps more.
Not originally intended as a collection, the poems nevertheless share many attributes, not least the question of identity.
The treatment of this theme within ‘Les Chimères’ is interestingly key to an understanding of the collection and one which raises several points pertaining to Nerval’s particular poetic technique.