The Fantastic and Female Identity in The Ballet Giselle, an Indirect Relationship With Literature

Abstract

This work analyzes the relationship between two artistic disciplines -ballet and literature- and, specifically, between the choreographic work Giselle (1841), by Jean Coralli (1779-1845) and Jules Perrot (1810-1892), and two literary works: the poem Fantomes by Victor Hugo (1802-1885), published in his work Les Orientales (1829), and a popular legend from The Elementary Spirits (1837), by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). To do this, we explain the process through which both literary texts become one of the most recognized ballets, describing as clearly as possible the convergences and divergences between these three works, which belong to different artistic disciplines, though at the same time remaining in the fantastic genre. Likewise, a comparative analysis is proposed that focuses initially on the roles adopted by the female characters in Giselle to cover later the roles they acquire in different literary works by Hugo and Heine.