Gérard de Nerval, playwright and poet, one of the most significant figures of French romanticism, defies a rigid classification as any true romantic figure: the likeable, good-natured and eccentric poet, associated with the frenetic bohemian Parisian society. The deep reflection of Nerval’s writing for theater and about theater, completed with his theoretical thought on artistic creation in general, the scholar tries to examine main principles of the French form of the theater of the European modernism (inspiration by other cultures, an influence of translations, transformations of modern staging techniques, particularities of the theater operations at the time, the romantic manifestos, modern dramaturgy and others). The book focuses on little reflected theater and critical aspects of Nerval’s work, bringing new partial translations of selected texts of the author, often the first into Czech, and placing them into the context of the literary, dramatic and theatrical production of the period.