French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Marquer, Naissance du fantastique clinique. La crise de l'analyse dans la littérature fin-de-siècle
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Review published in Acta Fabula (January 2016, vol. 17, no. 1): "The Clinical Fantastic" by Martina Diaz.
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Bertrand Marquer, Naissance du fantastique clinique. La crise de l'analyse dans la littérature fin-de-siècle
Hermann, coll. "Savoir lettres". Published: November 21, 2014.
EAN13: 9782705689254
245 p. - 28 €
View the book on the publisher's website
Drawing on Michel Foucault's definition of the clinical, this essay offers a fresh reading of various late 19th-century fantastic works (by Maupassant, Lorrain, Lermina, Villiers, and Zola), questioning the criteria that classify them as "fantastic." The birth of clinical medicine is indeed traditionally linked to realist aesthetics, providing it with a method, a subject matter (pathology), and an explanatory system.
The central hypothesis is that the fin-de-siècle fantastic stems from a specific perspective (the "real fantastic") that draws several of its poetic rules from clinical science: Broussais's principle (the continuity between the normal and the pathological), Baillarger's principle (the primacy of the involuntary), and the role of analysis (having become a morbid principle of disintegration).
Bertrand Marquer is a Senior Lecturer (Maître de conférences) at the University of Strasbourg. His research, situated at the crossroads of the history of science, mentalities, and literature, focuses on nineteenth-century scientific imaginaries (forms, discourses, ideologies).
During the nineteenth century, the emergence of clinical observation profoundly transformed European literature, fostering close exchanges between medical discourse and realist aesthetics. As the human sciences sought to map the boundaries between sanity and madness, writers increasingly engaged with psychiatric and physiological theories to depict psychological states. This critical intersection reflects a broader cultural fascination with positivism, degeneration and the unconscious, themes that dominated the intellectual landscape of the period and left a lasting imprint on narrative forms across genres.
Bertrand Marquer examines works by authors such as Guy de Maupassant, Jean Lorrain, Jules Lermina, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Émile Zola, drawing on Michel Foucault's conceptions of the clinical. Readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature and the historical intersections between science and narrative may find this volume relevant to their inquiries.