Research On Nerval’s Dream Writing

Gerard de Nerval is a talented French writer in the 19 th century,but he was ignored by the era because of the advanced literary idea. With the development of later modern literature schools, Nerval the name gradually came to the readers’ attention and became a household character, his contribution in literature also has been found. Dream writing is a very prominent characteristic in Nerval’s writing styles and through the analysis of the form, we can see the very rich significance dimensions, including his view of reality, time consciousness and death-awareness.The thesis is divided into four parts to make a specific narration. In the part of introduction,there is a brief statement of Nerval’s life experience and writing process, then a summary of domestic and foreign review related to Nerval and his works.The second part discusses the different understanding towards reality of fantasy writing, Nerval committed to the exploration of the inner emotional world, he thought the real life is false and meaningless and the reality exists in people’s subjective cognition, even the effect of mental illness made Nerval confuse the boundaries of reality and fantasy, as a result, Nerval put forward the slogan of "dream is second life", the scene in the dream is true, and tried to reach to the verge of spiritual world through dream writing.The third chapter mainly talks about the relationship between time and dream writing, Nerval got rid of the objective time limit in traditional novels, playing down the role of time and depending on stream of consciousness to create works. Nerval looked for memories in past and made time keep recalling back.The fourth chapter is about the death consciousness behind the dream writing. Nerval looks for the eternal life through the acknowledge of death, he brought death into dream and religious category, starting from himself own understanding of death, the connotation of death had been changed radically from terror and evil to the incarnation of beauty, kindness and truth, and then to the sublimation of immortality, revealing Nerval’s unique death awareness and attitude towards life. Nerval’s life is a dream, readers could enter the author’s inner world, feel his unique understanding of life and spiritual world through his dreams.