Through Perrault, the birth of an interest in the popular and fabulous sources of its culture took place in France before it reached its neighbours. But, at the beginning of the 20th century, the attitude of Mme de Staël testifies to a lasting change regarding the realm of the supernatural : the need for truth as inherited form the Enlightenment makes it impossible to represent the Unreal. In harmony with Walter Scott, who feared the exposure of the devices of literature, Nodier promoted a rationalised form of the supernatural : this would give birth to the genre of the fantastic. The success of dramatic “faeries” – Féeries – on the popular stage contributed to the devaluation of their imaginary dimension. In such conditions, it could only renew itself through children’s literature, with Mme de Girardin or Hetzel, before Dumas started out, in 1844, on his methodical phagocytising of the works of Hoffman, Grimm and Andersen.