SOURCE: "Gérard de Nerval: 'Madness Tells Her Story'," in Lucid Interval: Subjective Writing and Madness in History, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992, pp. 177-95.

Below, MacLennan studies Nerval's subjective portrayal of madness in Aurélia and relates the tale to other nineteenth-century French literature. He examines the story's conclusion and reviews Nerval's use of visionary sequences and dream narratives.

Gérard's sojourn in the asylum in the final episodes of Aurélia parallels George Trosse's experience in Glastonbury and Cowper's in St Albans. Each protagonist undergoes a spiritual resurrection in a place of healing. In Aurélia, however, the asylum, for all its historical specificity, remains a fictional construction. The tension between autobiographical history and autobiographical fiction reflects the tension which characterises the work as a whole: as an autobiographical discourse, it is bound up with the relevant historical and biographical contexts, but as a writing of subjectivity...