« Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie » Nerval et la noblesse

Gérard de Nerval’s nobiliary pretensions amount to an engagement. At base, the aristocracy is what is tasked with defending individuals against royal power. In the nineteenth century, the era of the traditional nobility’s decadence, the writer must replace the aristocracy as the intermediary between the power and simple citizens: this is, in any case, the desire formulated by Gérard de Nerval.