Contradiction is a term that characterizes not only Charles Nodier's personality but also his oeuvre, philosophy, politics, and, ultimately, his place in the French canon. On the one hand, he was a man born of the Enlightenment; his lifelong work on botany, entomology, linguistics, and dictionaries exemplifies his appreciation, pursuit, and advancement of learning based on the tradition of eighteenth-century philosophical and scientific inquiry. One of his foremost concerns was the organization of knowledge in order to make it more accessible. His bibliophilia was founded on this interest; his lexicons also illustrate it, as do his insect collections and his profession as a librarian.

But, on the other hand, this was a person who often railed at the notion that positivistic science could explain the mysterious, spiritual dimension of human experience or provide satisfactory answers to the deepest human fears and questions about the unknown. In his fantastic...