The goals of the romantic work are fully realised in Aurélia. Nerval, in referring, in the very first pages of the novel, to the « poetic models » represented by Apuleius, Dante and Swedenborg, conceives of this new « study of the human soul » as of the synthesis between three periods – Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the 18th century –, three religions – paganism, Christianity, Illuminism –, and three literary genres : the narrative of initiation, the spiritual autobiography, and visionary literature. Nerval thus romanticises and novelises the models from the past, in that he takes them up again as part of the progress of a universal literature, but in that he also gives them a new life through exposing them to infinite subjectivity : for here life gives its substance to the work, in order that the work in its turn should bring life the light of poetic truth.