ABSTRACT
This chapter explores one of Nodier’s earlier contes fantastiques, ‘Trilby’, (1822), with a view to understanding not just how it conforms to definitions of Fantastique literature, but the extent to which the central character is capable of both contracting and expanding space in their perception when experiencing Fantastic events. The chapter proceeds to examine both Nodier’s own developing views on Fantastic literature, and further examines the portrayal of time and space in the story in relation to Bakhtin’s theories of chronotope, arguing that this work of the pure Fantastic is an unusual hybrid that merges the Castle Chronotope and the Agricultural Idyll Chronotope in unusual and unexpected ways.
