History, Fiction, and Legend in Nerval's Angelique

In Angelique Nerval presents two conceptions of history. In the first, history is like a painting or a spectacle, an object which can be transcended by a spectator. In the second, history is a system of signs which cannot be made into a totality or object for a transcendental subject. History is a cultural tradition-a system of symbolic differences-which in passing itself on from generation to generation erases itself and presents itself as nature. Angelique is composed of a series of letters from Nerval to his publisher explaining Nerval's search for a historical source on which he can base a biography of l'abbe de Bucquoy, whose story appears in Les Illuminds. A recently passed law prohibits the publication of fiction, the feuilleton-roman. The high penalties of this law force Nerval to engage in a lengthy quest for the book which will serve as concrete proof that he is writing history, rather than a historical novel. The censors consider history to be a literal language which corresponds to the empirical reality it names, while fiction is an arbitrary language which has no referent. Nerval treats this law ironically, pretending to take seriously the distinction between history and fiction, and yet erasing the difference between the two whenever he says that he is trying to abide by it

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