<I>FEU HARRIETT</I> DE LOUIS MULLEM: UN CONTE BIEN ÉTRANGE

Authors

  • Noèlle Benhamou
Keywords: narración, relato breve, género, fantástico, parodia, sátira

Abstract

Louis Mullem (1836-1908), a now mainly forgotten writer, belonged to the realist and naturalist literary schools. One of his works, Contes d’Amérique (Tales of America, 1890), was a collection of tales, including a strange original short story, Feu Harriett, (The late Harriett) which first appeared on December 10, 1882, in La Vie populaire. This short story, created as a trompe-l’oeil, purports to be a ghost story. In reality, Mullem is just playing with some traditional themes of the conte fantastique (such as the melancholy widower or a vision of the deceased wife) as he introduces an element of parody in his writing. Feu Harriett is, then, both a satire of spiritualism, progress, conjugal love and idealism as well as being a homage to the famous contes fantastiques of Nerval, Gautier, Poe, and especially Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, the underlying sources of Mullem’s story.

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Author Biography

Noèlle Benhamou

Centre Zola, ITEM-CNRS
How to Cite
Benhamou, N. (2007). <I>FEU HARRIETT</I> DE LOUIS MULLEM: UN CONTE BIEN ÉTRANGE. Anales de Filología Francesa, 15, 59–76. Retrieved from https://revistas.um.es/analesff/article/view/21601