La fantaisie romantique et la loupe naturaliste: deux images littéraires de la névrose au XIXe siècle
The romantic fantasy and the e ye-glass of a naturalist: two literary images of neurosis in the 19th century

Summary/Abstract: The subject of mental troubles and diseases, often covered by the common term of ‘neurosis’, occurs in the literature of all times. The portraits of characters showing various kinds of neurotic behaviour differ according to the aesthetics of the period of their creation. The paper shows two opposite ways of perceiving neurosis in the 19th century, characteristic for the Romanticism and the Naturalism. The portrait of a romantic hero, “hallucinated”, gloomy and melancholic, suffering from a couple of mysterious symptoms leading unavoidably to death, should touch or even frighten the reader. It is opposed to a “clinical” vision of neurosis as a pathological condition of the organism. A consequence of the postulate of objectivity and scientific truth involved by the Naturalism is a medical-report-like description of a “human animal” while ill.

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