Charles Nodier

Ser a dif cil separar a la literatura oscura y de horror del papel que el Romanticismo tuvo en su surgimiento, auge y consolidaci n. Uniendo los precedentes de la novela g tica, las baladas sobrenaturales y la poes a de cementerio, numerosos autores rom nticos se abocar an a cimentar el g nero del cuento de horror, cuyos ecos llegan hasta el presente, as como a incursionar en un tipo de escritura que no tardar a en dar lugar a la poes a en prosa y a escuelas est ticas como las del simbolismo y el decadentismo. Este volumen, que cierra la trilog a de esta editorial sobre literatura oscura, nos presenta diversos hitos de la sombr a prosa de ese per odo. La obra se inicia a fines del siglo XVIII con el fragmento Sir Bertrand, de John Aikin, que nos ofrece un perfecto ejemplo de las diversas caracter sticas de la novela g tica prerrom ntica, y con una de las Noches l gubres, de Jos Cadalso, herederas directas de la poes a de cementerio. Ya en el siglo rom ntico, nos asomamos a algunas de las m s tempranas incursiones en el cuento corto de horror de la mano del franc s Charles Nodier, autor de la antolog a Infernaliana, el alem n E. T. A. Hoffmann, con Una historia de fantasmas, y el estadounidense Washington Irving, con La aventura del estudiante alem n. La r pida evoluci n del g nero empieza a quedar manifiesta en obras como El joven Goodman Brown, de Nathaniel Hawthorne, Morella, de Edgar Allan Poe, Viy, del ucraniano Nikolai Gogol, La familia del vurdalak, en la que el ruso Aleksei K. Tolstoi nos presenta a los vampiros eslavos, y muchas de las Leyendas del espa ol Gustavo Adolfo B cquer, en las que se condensa toda la oscuridad del Romanticismo tard o. Uno de los primeros herederos de toda esta literatura es sin duda Charles Baudelaire, que populariza el g nero de los poemas en prosa y resulta as una influencia insoslayable para el espeluznante surrealismo de Los cantos de Maldoror, del Conde de Lautr amont. La huella que la est tica rom ntica deja en todo el subsiguiente g nero de horror se vuelve f cilmente identificable en los relatos de Kwaidan, de Lafcadio Hearn, y tambi n en muchas de las m s alucinadas p ginas de Guy de Maupassant, uno de cuyos ejemplos es su cl sico El horl . El presente viaje culmina con la aparici n, a fines del siglo XIX, de la escuela decadentista, cuya oscuridad y morbidez pueden apreciarse tanto en diversos fragmentos de la novela All lejos, de Joris-Karl Huysmans, como en el drama Salom , de Oscar Wilde.

Smarra ou les d mons de la nuit: Songes romantiques, is a classical book and has been considered important throughout the human history. So that this book is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this again in a modern format book for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

Infernaliana; Anecdotes, petits romans, nouvelles et contes sur les revenans, les spectres, les d mons et les vampires, is a classical book and has been considered important throughout the human history. So that this book is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this again in a modern format book for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

Dictionnaire raisonn des onomatop es fran aises, is a classical book and has been considered important throughout the human history. So that this book is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this again in a modern format book for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

In 1831 Charles Nodier began to publish a series of "Extraits des m moires de Maxime Odin" in the Revue de Paris. Although "Odin" is an anagram of the first four letters of Nodier, the relationship between the author and "Maxime Odin" is far more complicated than a simple transfiguration, and although all the stories in the present collection are entirely fictitious, the intensity of the author's imaginative involvement with them should not be underestimated. The Memoirs of Maxime Odin, presented here for the first time in English, in a magnificent translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the great works of French romanticism-exquisite, entertaining and touching, this is a masterpiece, the arrival of which has been long overdue in the English speaking world.

R impression inchang e de l' dition originale de 1860. La maison d' dition Anatiposi publie des livres historiques en r impression. En raison de leur ge, ces livres peuvent pr senter des pages manquantes ou une qualit moindre. Notre objectif est de pr server ces livres et de les rendre accessibles au public afin qu'ils ne se perdent pas.

R impression inchang e de l' dition originale de 1860. La maison d' dition Anatiposi publie des livres historiques en r impression. En raison de leur ge, ces livres peuvent pr senter des pages manquantes ou une qualit moindre. Notre objectif est de pr server ces livres et de les rendre accessibles au public afin qu'ils ne se perdent pas.

The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, here presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the most unusual works of Charles Nodier, and can readily be seen as a remote precursor of Alfred Jarry's "pataphysics," Guillaume Apollinaire's "surrealism" and Dadaism. Originally published in 1830, more than a hundred years before the publication of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Nodier's novel, like the latter, is a highly avant-garde work of dream fiction. It is deliberately incoherent, and in places deliberately incomprehensible, but its incoherence is never without an underlying purpose and an underlying schema, partly because it takes for granted the thesis that the apparent incoherence, inconsequentiality and incomprehensibility of real dreams must have an underlying purpose, however arcane, and an underlying schema, however bizarre-and that expeditions in literary surrealism are valuable processes of exploration, capable of offering valuable and unique rewards. It is, in its own peculiar fashion, a masterpiece of intelligence, wit and literary artistry. This edition of The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles supplements the title novel with three related texts: "On the Phenomena of Sleep," an essay on dreams, and two biographical fantasies, "Polichinelle," and "The Bibliomaniac."