Arria Marcella de Théophile Gautier ou comment utiliser ­l’histoire pour créer un univers fantastique

For a tale to qualify as fantastic, the reader must always doubt the reality of the ­story’s events. This is what Gautier achieves in his novella Arria Marcella, a retrospective tale of love in which the experience of the fantastic ­concerns Pompeiian civilisation and its direct links with the present. The precise descriptions of its daily life provide authenticity, and show that osmosis between two worlds is still possible.