The Sierra Morena, a privileged place for the Gothic novel since the late 18th century, is anchored in the European collective imaginary since Antiquity. Before the generation of Lewis and Potocki, this mountain range already signalled fictionality in the works of Cervantes, Fénelon or Lesage. Through this example, the study, which is only a quick sketch, aims to show that topography and chronology are, in the Gothic, particularly unstable parameters. The Gothic then appears as one of the countless possible figurations of the fiction as a model and practice of alterity, not as a clearly defined literary genre which would be reduced to a specific topic and poetics.