Aim. The article aims to investigate the polysemantics of the aesthetic strategies that determined the tr ansition from sentimentalism to the romanticism of B. de Saint - Pierre in the novel «Paul and Virginie», the special features of the poetics and historical and literary significance. Methodology. The article is based on a comprehensive historical and literary analysis of the work, with the elements of cultural, mythocritical, and hermeneutical approaches. Results. It’s proved that B. de Saint-Pierre embodied the transition to romanticism as an incomplete process that in a contradicting manner combines the naturalization of the genre whole (synthesis) with socio-psychological motives and myths. The mode of the irrational problematizes the underlying teleological model of the genre. Preparing and anticipating the works by Chateaubriand and G. de Stael, the author introduced existential themes and motives inherent in romanticism, an unsolvable conflict of «real» and «ideal». The romantic aesthetics of antinomies and contrasts grow through traditional forms and interacts with them, creating new meanings; the ratio of the lyrical and the picturesque, the dramatic and the tragic, sensitivity and senses, the providential and the fateful. The novel contributes to forming a romantic melodrama that characterizes many genres of the popular literature of the nineteenth century. Research implications. The results of the research deepen the understanding of the process of changing aesthetic paradigms; antithetical and ambivalent poetics of the novel, which develops the principles of romantic writing; in University courses on the history of foreign literature of the turn of the 18th - early 19th centuries.