Echoes of the récit villageois in Sylvie Scenes of return to the native country

In the 1840s, the récit villageois enjoys great success in Europe: it is naive in its anchoring in an ancestral peasant culture but sentimental insofar as it takes note of a rupture between this heritage and the modern world. This article examines the topos of the return to the native country in G. Sand, A. Weill, and B. Auerbach—as well as in Nerval, who tweaks this scene to the point of vertigo by reinventing the desired fusion with the world of origins in another way.