87

The aim of this paper is to conduct a comparative reading of Arria Marcella by Théophile Gautier and Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach, the first novel that mixed texts and photographs in French literary history. In these two texts, we find cities that are linked with death: Pompeii and Bruges. Pompeii is a ghost city rediscovered after it was buried beneath the ashes of Vesuvius. As for Bruges, its textual and photographic representation shows the emptiness and absence in the narrator’s life following his wife’s death. The urban environment, particularly that of a ghost city, is the ideal surrounding for a ghost to appear, in these particular cases a dead woman in love. As a result, we will describe the common points between the poetic treatment of the ghost city and the dead woman.