Germaine de Staël, Daughter of the Enlightenment

Germaine de Staël, Daughter of the Enlightenment
Author: Sergine Dixon
Publisher: Humanities Press International
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781591025603

One of the most influential women in French history was Germaine de Stal (1766-1817). Analyzing her novels, correspondence, and writings on politics and the intellectual trends of the time, Dixon presents an appealing portrait of the woman whose life and career bridged the end of the Enlightenment and the beginning of Romanticism.

Germaine de Staël

Germaine de Staël
Author: Biancamaria Fontana
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-05-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691169047

The first in-depth look at Staël's political life and writings Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) is perhaps best known today as a novelist, literary critic, and outspoken and independent thinker. Yet she was also a prominent figure in politics during the French Revolution. Biancamaria Fontana sheds new light on this often overlooked aspect of Staël's life and work, bringing vividly to life her unique experience as a political actor in a world where women had no place. The banker's daughter who became one of Europe's best-connected intellectuals, Staël was an exceptionally talented woman who achieved a degree of public influence to which not even her wealth and privilege would normally have entitled her. During the Revolution, when the lives of so many around her were destroyed, she succeeded in carving out a unique path for herself and making her views heard, first by the powerful men around her, later by the European public at large. Fontana provides the first in-depth look at her substantial output of writings on the theory and practice of the exercise of power, setting in sharp relief the dimension of Staël's life that she cared most about—politics. She was fascinated by the nature of public opinion, and believed that viable political regimes were founded on public trust and popular consensus. Fontana shows how Staël's ideas were shaped by the remarkable times in which she lived, and argues that it is only through a consideration of her political insights that we can fully understand Staël's legacy and its enduring relevance for us today.

Mistress to an Age

Mistress to an Age
Author: J. Christopher Herold
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780802138378

J. Christopher Herold vigorously tells the story of the fierce Madame de Stael, revealing her courageous opposition to Napoleon, her whirlwind affairs with the great intellectuals of her day, and her idealistic rebellion against all that was cynical, tyrannical, and passionless. Germaine de Stael's father was Jacques Necker, the finance minister to Louis XVI, and her mother ran an influential literary-political salon in Paris. Always precocious, at nineteen Germaine married the Swedish ambassador to France, Eric Magnus Baron de Stael-Holstein, and in 1785 took over her mother's salon with great success. Germaine and de Stael lived most of their married life apart. She had many brilliant lovers. Talleyrand was the first, Narbonne, the minister of war, another; Benjamin Constant was her most significant and long-lasting one. She published several political and literary essays, including "A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations," which became one of the most important documents of European Romanticism. Her bold philosophical ideas, particularly those in "On Literature," caused feverish commotion in France and were quickly noticed by Napoleon, who saw her salon as a rallying point for the opposition. He eventually exiled her from France. This winner of the 1959 National Book Award is "excellent ... detailed, full of color, movement, great names, and lively incident" -- The New York Times "Mr. Herold's full-bodied biography is clear-eyed, intelligent, and written with abundant wit and zest." -- The Atlantic Monthly

Ten Years' Exile

Ten Years' Exile
Author: Madame De Stael
Publisher: Open Gate Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2005-04
Genre: Authors, French
ISBN: 9780900001505

In 1802 Napoleon decided that there was no room in France for both himself and Madame de Stael, and he therefore sent into exile the woman whose intelligent liberal views were potentially dangerous for him. At first she was banished from Paris, and later, after the suppression of her book on Germany, from France. She began to write her memoirs, and was so carefully watched by Napoleon's agents that she even had to change the names of many people she mentioned, substituting English for French names in the manuscript. She stayed in Switzerland, travelled through Germany and Austria, and later through Poland into Russia. After she had stayed in Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Napoleon began his ill-fated expedition to Russia. She left the country in haste for Sweden, and it was there that much of this book was written.

Mme de Staël and Political Liberalism in France

Mme de Staël and Political Liberalism in France
Author: Chinatsu Takeda
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9811080879

This book sheds light on the unique aspects of ‘communal liberalism’ in Mme de Staël’s writings and considers her contribution to nineteenth-century French liberal political thought. Focusing notably on the ‘Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française’, it examines the originality of Stael’s liberal philosophy. Rather than contrasting liberalism with either multiculturalism or republicanism, the book argues that Staël’s communal liberalism challenges the conventions of nineteenth-century political thought, notably through her assertion of the need to institutionalize an organic intermediary connecting the two spheres, an idea later advanced by thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas. Offering a critical reappraisal of Staël’s multifaceted work, this book assesses the political impact of her work, arguing that the political influence of the ‘Considérations’ permeates the liberal historiography of the French Revolution up to the present day.

Staël's Philosophy of the Passions

Staël's Philosophy of the Passions
Author: Tili Boon Cuillé
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2013
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1611484723

Sensibility, or the capacity to feel, played a vital role in philosophical reflection about the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the arts in eighteenth-century France. Yet scholars have privileged the Marquis de Sade's vindication of physiological sensibility as the logical conclusion of Enlightenment over Germaine de Sta l's exploration of moral sensibility's potential for reform and renewal that paved the way for Romanticism. This volume of essays showcases Sta l's contribution to the "affective revolution" in Europe, investigating the personal and political circumstances that informed her theory of the passions and the social and aesthetic innovations to which it gave rise. Contributors move seamlessly between her political, philosophical, and fictional works, attentive to the relationship between emotion and cognition and aware of the coherence of her thought on an individual, national, and international scale. They first examine the significance Sta l attributed to pity, happiness, melancholy, and enthusiasm in The Influence of the Passions as she witnessed revolutionary strife and envisioned the new republic. They then explore her development of a cosmopolitan aesthetic, in such works as On Literature, Corinne, or Italy, On Germany, and The Spirit of Translation, that transcended traditional generic, national, and linguistic boundaries. Finally, they turn to her contributions to the visual and musical arts as she deftly negotiated the transition from a Neoclassical to a Romantic aesthetic. Sta l's Philosophy of the Passions concludes that, rather than founding a republic based on the rights of man, Sta l's reflection fostered international communities of women (artists, models, and collectors; authors, performers, and spectators), enabling them to participate in the re-articulation of sociocultural values in the wake of the French Revolution. Contributors: Tili Boon Cuill , Catherine Dubeau, Nanette Le Coat, Christine Dunn Henderson, Karen de Bruin, M. Ione Crummy, Jennifer Law-Sullivan, Lauren Fortner Ravalico, C. C. Wharram, Kari Lokke, Susan Tenenbaum, Mary D. Sheriff, Heather Belnap Jensen, Fabienne Moore, Julia Effertz

Madame de Stael

Madame de Stael
Author: Maria Fairweather
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2013-09-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1472113306

The influence of the salons of Paris on the thought and culture of the eighteenth century would be difficult to overstate. They were both intellectual powerhouses and also assemblies where the latest and most extreme fashion was displayed. 'Young gallants...wearing silk waistcoats embroidered with Chinese pagodas, making love to ladies reclining negligently against the cushions...or accepting small cups of chocolate from the hands of Negro pages', thus Harold Nicolson describes the drawings of the time in his book "The Age of Reason". These meeting places for the vanguard of society were presided over by a succession of brilliantly clever women, the salonieres, and the most brilliant and clever of all of them was Madame de Stael. Although she died at the age of 51 she filled her life to the brim, and enjoyed a hugely influential role among the great names of the day. Born Germaine Necker, in Paris on 22 April 1766, her father was a powerful banker and her mother a Swiss pastor's daughter who never got over her good fortune in marrying a rich man. In 1786 Germaine was married to a secretary in the Swedish embassy called de Stael, but although she thought him 'a perfect gentleman' she also found him dull and clumsy. She began to take lovers - the Vicomte de Narbonne and possibly Talleyrand - and then Benjamin Constant, in whom she at last met her intellectual equal. In 1806 her novel "Delphine" was published. It was an instant success and praised by Goethe and Byron, among others. Her salon thronged with glittering visitors including The Tsar, Talleyrand,and Wellington. Maria Fairweather gives an entrancing account of this vanished world, so merciless to outsiders, but for those of the inner circle incomparably glamorous and exciting.

The Other Enlightenment

The Other Enlightenment
Author: Carla Hesse
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691188424

The French Revolution created a new cultural world that freed women from the constraints of corporate privilege, aristocratic salons, and patriarchal censorship, even though it failed to grant them legal equality. Women burst into print in unprecedented numbers and became active participants in the great political, ethical, and aesthetic debates that gave birth to our understanding of the individual as a self-creating, self-determining agent. Carla Hesse tells this story, delivering a capacious history of how French women have used writing to create themselves as modern individuals. Beginning with the marketplace fishwives and salon hostesses whose eloquence shaped French culture low and high and leading us through the accomplishments of Simone de Beauvoir, Hesse shows what it meant to make an independent intellectual life as a woman in France. She offers exquisitely constructed portraits of the work and mental lives of many fascinating women--including both well-known novelists and now-obscure pamphleteers--who put pen to paper during and after the Revolution. We learn how they negotiated control over their work and authorial identity--whether choosing pseudonyms like Georges Sand or forsaking profits to sign their own names. We encounter the extraordinary Louise de Kéralio-Robert, a critically admired historian who re-created herself as a revolutionary novelist. We meet aristocratic women whose literary criticism subjected them to slander as well as writers whose rhetoric cost them not only reputation but marriage, citizenship, and even their heads. Crucially, their stories reveal how the unequal terms on which women entered the modern era shaped how they wrote and thought. Though women writers and thinkers championed the full range of political and social positions--from royalist to Jacobin, from ultraconservative to fully feminist--they shared common moral perspectives and representational strategies. Unlike the Enlightenment of their male peers, theirs was more skeptical than idealist, more situationalist than universalist. And this alternative project lies at the very heart of modern French letters.

Feminism and the Politics of Travel After the Enlightenment

Feminism and the Politics of Travel After the Enlightenment
Author: Yaël Rachel Schlick
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 1611484286

Taking the Enlightenment and the feminist tradition to which it gave rise as its historical and philosophical coordinates, Feminism and the Politics of Travel After the Enlightenment explores the coincidence of feminist vindications and travel in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the way travel's utopian dimension and feminism's utopian ideals have intermittently fed off each other in productive ways. Travel's gender politics is analyzed in the works of J.-J. Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, Germaine de Staël, Frances Burney, Flora Tristan, Suzanne Voilquin, Gustave Flaubert George Sand, Robyn Davidson, and Sara Wheeler.