Emphase. Madame de Staëls Improvisation und die Trunkenheit der Rede

Abstract

Conversation is one of the poetical and cultural key concepts in the writings of Mme de Stael. Departing from the contemporary understanding of the term, she outlines the conversational act as an essentially transgressive praxis that surpasses a classical canon of social, aesthetic, and linguistic norms. Highlighting a broad variety of musical, sensual, and pre-semantic aspects of language, she insists on the informal dynamics of conversation. To a certain extent, Mme de Stael claims, all conversation is improvisation, and it is within improvisation that she locates (and welcomes) the trigger of unsuspected twists and turns, the spirited, the emphatic, and even drunken quality of verbal and non-verbal exchange. The paper discusses the development of this concept in Mme de Stael's major novel, Corinne ou l'Italie. It argues that this novel is one of the first to delineate conversation as transference, shifting the focus of attention from the realm of intentionality to non-thematic qualities of communication.