Germaine de Stael: A Political Portrait, by Biancamaria Fontana

Abstract

Biancamaria Fontana seeks to showcase Germaine de Stael’s originality and depth as a political thinker. She makes a convincing case that, despite de Stael’s reputation as a novelist and literary critic, scholars have overlooked the writer’s political ideas. Many have tended to view her political engagement in terms of her biography and to see her ideas as derivative of the men she associated with, especially her father, Jacques Necker, and her friends and lovers, Louis de Narbonne and Benjamin Constant. De Stael’s commitment to political moderation has also probably dissuaded scholars of the French Revolution more intrigued by radicalism than constitutional monarchy. Fontana seeks to remedy this relative neglect by offering a sustained analysis of de Stael’s own political writing during and after the Revolution. The book is organised chronologically; chapters also focus on key political works. It begins in 1791, with what seems to have been de Stael’s first published work of political analysis. It then continues through Napoleon’s ascent to power and de Stael’s subsequent turn to literature, with a final chapter on her posthumously published 1818 reflections on the revolution and hopes for the future.