French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Montandon, Les Yeux de la nuit. Essai sur le romantisme allemand
Other Literary Studies

LES YEUX DE LA NUIT. Essai sur le romantisme allemand

Alain MONTANDON
Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal, Coll. "Révolutions et Romantismes", 2010.

460 p.
ISBN 978-2-84516-421-5

30 €

Bookstore distribution: CID – online: www.lcdpu.fr

Publisher's overview:

The author offers a fresh reading of German Romantic literature, guided by the unifying thread of a new poetics centered on the nocturnal. The theme of the night, which raises the challenge of the unrepresentable, triggers a profound crisis of mimesis that had previously served as the foundation of aesthetics. One of the innovative aspects of this approach is that it resituates this paradigm shift within the history of technology, marked by a fundamental revolution in lighting that resulted in a heightened sensitivity to light and darkness, as well as entirely new perspectives. Artificial light truly illuminated the night, uncovering new fields concurrent with a crisis of representation that stands as a foundational source of modernity. From the Enlightenment to Neo-Romanticism, and without overlooking the contributions of the natural sciences and philosophy, the author explores the nocturnal in literature and painting, highlighting numerous mystical, poetic, fantastic, unconscious, and nihilistic dimensions within this privileged space and time where core truths are brought into play.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: The Night of the Enlightenment
Chapter 2: Light and Shadow
Chapter 3: Novalis: The Night of Love
Chapter 4: Hölderlin: The Flame and Oblivion
Chapter 5: Nihilism
Chapter 6: Tieck, or the Indecipherable Night
Chapter 7: Somnambulistic Dreams and Magnetic Nights
Chapter 8: Hoffmann's Nocturnes
Chapter 9: Eichendorff and Ambiguous Nights
Chapter 10: Painting the Night
Chapter 11: Mörike, Before Dawn
Epilogue
Index
List of Illustrations

German Romanticism, spanning the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, fundamentally reshaped European aesthetics by prioritizing subjectivity, emotion, and the irrational. In Les Yeux de la nuit, Alain Montandon situates the nocturnal at the heart of this movement, tracing how writers like Novalis, Hölderlin, and E. T. A. Hoffmann used the night to challenge classical ideas of mimesis, or the imitation of nature. By examining how the rise of artificial lighting altered human perception, the author connects literary and artistic shifts to historical developments in technology, showing how the illuminated night became a primary site for exploring the unconscious and the fantastic.

This interdisciplinary study is highly valuable for scholars and students of comparative literature, art history, and European cultural studies. By analyzing both canonical texts and visual art, Montandon provides a comprehensive overview of how the German Romantics transitioned from the rationalism of the Enlightenment to a deeper engagement with nihilism, dreams, and the natural sciences. Readers interested in the intersection of technology and aesthetics will find his insights into the history of lighting particularly illuminating, offering a fresh perspective on the origins of modern artistic sensibility.