Daydreaming as a style in Sylvie de Nerval and in Lermontov's "First of January"

Abstract

Daydream, an element particularly linked to romanticism, does not simply appear as a theme in Lermontov's poem ‘First of January’ and in Nerval's nouvelle Sylvie; it forms a particular style. From an aesthetic-hermeneutic approach and a comparative methodology, we suggest that daydream is present in the totality of the texts and thus appears as a style: it is built in the arrangement of the language, the construction of the images and the structure of the texts. Therefore we formulate the concept ‘style of daydream’ in order to approach the selected works. In turn, this leads us to establish a relationship with the particularities of the impressionist movement and enables us to make a connection with certain processes of the autonomy of art.