L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante – voyage imaginaire dans le temps selon le schéma canonique

Résumé

The aim of this paper is to comment the links between the work of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever The Was One, and narrative utopia model. The Mercier’s work is often considered as inventive fiction which presents a new type of utopia focused on the future, but a large number of traditional narrative strategies is used by the author to show Paris in 25th century. The future civilization is built on the Enlightenment ideas but it remains still attached by its culture to the 18th century. The Mercier’s work is inspired by the utopism but in this fiction the reader finds more a fictional realization of dreams and philosophical thinking about human nature.