De Stael Research Articles

Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers and Artists in Italy by Alison Chapman , Jane Stabler (review)

MLR, 100.3, 2005 839 'ancient' by means of its archaizing strategy,rather than seeing him 'fill in' the histor? ical gap between source and target text. There are, indeed, not just Renaissance but eighteenth-century and even contemporary poetic allusions throughout the Vision, including references to poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge. This is a new and implicitly ' Whiggish' historicism which sits uneasily with translation-theory formalism. Despite these caveats about translation studies, Crisafulli's chapter on its theory is most carefully and helpfully written, with particularly insightful remarks about the nature of equivalence and compensation. Similarly, his writing on the cultural milieu of the Vision's production and reception is equally strong. What would have bridged the gap often feltby this reader between the two discourses was more specific attention to the translation theory of Cary's own time.The Vision of Dante provides, however, a most fascinating introduction to Cary's magnificent achievement. University of Nottingham Alison Milbank Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers and Artists in Italy. Ed. by Alison Chapman and Jane Stabler. Manchester: Manchester Univer? sity Press. 2003. x + 246pp. ?15.99. ISBN 0-7190-6130-x. Unfolding the South brings a refreshing contribution to the study of Anglo-Italian relations in the nineteenth century, a subject which has been extremely productive for the reception of Dante, but surprisingly less so for less prominent genres. The volume purports to fill this gap with a selection of eleven interdisciplinary essays that cover diverse literary genres and the visual arts. It is notable for its breadth and ambition: the reader is overwhelmed by the variety of approaches, topics, and historical figures,while also being impressed by a refreshing sense of discovery. Alison Chapman and Jane Stabler's introduction is surprisingly understated, es? pecially by comparison with some of their authors' justified claims of having opened new areas of enquiry. However, the editors are more than helpful in signalling the recurring themes and topics, such as the legacy of Madame de Stael's Corinne; or,Italy (1807), the British perception of Italian culture, be it religion, politics, or art, and the actual envisaging of British women's role in Italy. Some issues could have been explored further,such as women's social position within the original and the receiving culture, the differentreasons fortheir residence abroad, as well as their endorsement of some of their male contemporaries' attitudes towards Italy. These questions are significant since all the essays deal with women writers, poets, and artists who not only chose Italy as the focus of their art, but also actually resided in the country. British women artists' and writers' attitudes toward Italy reveal a fundamental dichotomy: either they subscribe to or reject approaches elaborated before them or forthem by male writers, or they express views that can be qualified as gendered. Jane Stabler's and Angela Leighton's articles show how women often felt challenged by Italian art because of its links with Catholic ideology. A few,like Hester Piozzi, were able to approach religious festivities with an eye for sociological and anthropological values. More commonly they tended either to wrestle with anti-papist sentiments or to incline towards aesthetic participation. Four contributions analyse more specifically women's venturing into the realm of aesthetics via Italy and its visual history. Francis O'Gorman explores Margaret Oliphant's implicit dialogue with Ruskin in The Makers of Venice(1887), while Pamela Gerrish Nunn's contribution brings to light the painterly statements of Jane Benham Hay and Elisabeth Jerichau about the need for the British people to support poli? tical and social equality. Jan Marsh's and Catherine MaxwelPs articles rely on solid historical research that uncovers the literary and social relations with Italy of the neg? lected writer Vernon Lee and the painter Marie Spartali Stillman. Lee's and Spartali 840 Reviews Stillman's works negotiate their cultural belonging; while addressing a well-defined English public, their use of the ltalian tradition empowers British literature and art with originality and creativity. In so doing their work reveals the difficultyof applying 'feminine' values to women who explicitly challenge them. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot, too, are presented by the authors...

London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914 by Matt Cook (review)

474 Reviews Roman Empire, completed during Gibbon'sresidencein Lausanne from 178310 1794, and its more general impact on his life and character. He argues that the Swiss influ? ence is greater than previously thought, since the country made him aware of ideas which enabled him to express his views more strongly, as well as bringing him into contact with people who were extremely important to him (for example, his close fried Deyverdun and Suzanne Curchod, to whom Gibbon was fora time engaged). Gibbon saw Switzerland as a model forothers, a country which had managed to establish and maintain its independence against an empire, while at the same time continuing to fosterregional differences. Norman argues that Switzerland taught Gibbon about the importance of independence and freedom of expression, and affected not only his political ideas but also his analysis of the best ways to encourage industry. This study is highly documented and provides scrupulously detailed notes and discussion of the minutiae of Gibbon's life and work, which will doubtless be appreciated by readers who are familiar with Gibbon (although they will need to be able to read French, as quotations are not translated). Some ofthe more complex discus? sions, for instance concerning the possibility of dating texts according to Gibbon's use or misuse of accents (Chapter 2) and the place of Gallicisms in his later writing (Chapter 8), are clearly of interest to the initiated alone. The amount of detail can even occasionally get in the way of a clear line of argument as it is not always easy to see the emergence of the influences claimed by Norman (for example, concerning Gibbon's second visit, discussed in Chapter 5). In addition, the laudable desire to clarify points sometimes results in a certain amount of repetition; we are told several times, forinstance, that Coppet lies between Geneva and Lausanne and that Suzanne Curchod was the mother of the future Madame de Stael, and on p. 131 details of the English militia system provided two pages earlier are repeated. These quibbles aside, and although the conclusions do not emerge as forcefullyor as clearly as one might have hoped, this is a scholarly piece of work which has been immaculately researched and will certainly be of interest to those who have some knowledge of Gibbon and wish to find out more about his attitudes and his debt to Switzerland. University of Strathclyde Joy Charnley London and the Culture of Homosexuality, i88^-igi4. By Matt Cook. (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture) Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2003. xiv+ 223 pp. ?45; $65. ISBN 0-521-82207-6. Early on in this diligently researched study, Matt Cook points out that the growing press coverage given to 'gross indecencies' between men at the fin de siecle seemed to be providing their readers with increased awareness of what precisely constituted illicit homosexual activity.Whether itwas arrests at Cleveland Street or stained sheets at the Savoy, the who and where of homosexual relations in London seemed to be a more public property than ever before. However, there were many gaps, elisions, and omissions indicating that, by reporting on the habits and haunts of the urban homosexual, newspapers were increasingly forced to shroud the details of his activi? ties in even greater mystery. Few such omissions are likely to be found in this book, which despite taking a very broad interdisciplinary approach to its subject, finds its main strength in providing and examining just this wealth of neglected details, often bringing them to bear on quite well-known events in an extremely illuminating way. Indeed, if Edward Carson had been able to bolster his quotations from the text of Dorian Gray with Cook's section on the various London scandals and homosexual MLR, 100.2, 2005 475 associations evoked by that novel's geography, the Queensberry trial might have collapsed rather more quickly than it did. Broadly speaking, Cook argues for what he calls a relationship of 'controlled plu? rality' between London and homosexual identity,and he concentrates primarily upon the cultural mapping ofthe urban homosexual space and its impact upon homosexual identity at both the individual and group level. Although...

Osmond's Complaint: Gilbert Osmond's Mother and the Cultural Context of James's The Portrait of a Lady

By referring to Gilbert Osmond's mother in The Portrait of a Lady as "the American Corinne," Henry James alludes not only to the eponymous heroine of Madame de Stael's high-Romantic novel but also to the well-known epithet of Margaret Fuller, thus foregrounding his novel in an antebellum transcendental America far removed from the novel's actual place and time of Gilded Age America and post-Risorgimento Italy. In likening Portrait's heroine Isabel Archer to Osmond's mother in her spirit of inquiry and individualism, James provides a motive for Osmond's inscrutable hatred of Isabel and ties Isabel to the antebellum intellectual and spiritual fervor of transcendentalism, thus adding an additional historical, aesthetic, and philosophical layer to his novel.

William Hazlitt, on Being Brilliant

Authors were actuated by the desire of the applause of posterity, only so long as were debarred of that of their contemporaries, just as we see the map of the goldmines of Peru hanging in the room of Hogarth's Distressed Poet. In the midst of the ignorance and prejudices with which were surrounded, had a sort of forlorn hope in the prospect of immortality. spirit of universal criticism has superseded the anticipation of posthumous fame, and instead of waiting for the award of distant ages, the poet or prose-writer receives his final doom from the next number of the Edinburgh or Quarterly Review. According as the nearness of the applause increases, our impatience increases with it. A writer in a weekly journal engages with reluctance in a monthly publication: and again, a contributor to a daily paper sets about his task with greater spirit than either of them. It is like prompt payment. effort and the applause go together. (1) THE MOST INTRIGUING FEATURE OF THE PUBLICATION OF GERMAINE DE Stall's De l'Allemagne, coupled with the presence of the author at the launch in London, and the reissuing of many of her other works, was the quite surprising number of literary and journalistic responses to the Staelian oeuvre. Some of the most intense replies come from William Hazlitt, who continued to engage with de Stall's work directly and obliquely in many articles for newspapers and periodicals, both during and after her stay in England. De l'Allemagne's publication allowed Hazlitt not only to profit from another review, but also benefit his own productivity. Unable as yet to find a publisher for the lectures he had given on metaphysics in 1812, de Stael's work provided the ideal opportunity. As a consequence, after a general review of the work for the Morning Chronicle in November 1813, Hazlitt proceeded to publish four more essays between February and April 1814 in the same paper. Although entitled de Stael's Account of German Philosophy, Hazlitt published his own work, making only cursory glances at the original text, covering the works of Hobbes, Locke, Hartley, Helvetius and others. As Hazlitt's biographer Stanley Jones notes, the complex philosophical debates must have presented the readers of the paper with quite a surprise: they stood out from the rest of the matter, war correspondence, political reports, London and provincial news, with an abstruseness that must have made many a reader stare. Only Madame de Stael's popularity can explain Perry's acceptance of these eight closely printed columns. (2) This is in no way to denigrate Hazlitt's writing. As a journalist he took advantage of every opportunity that came his way, and, most importantly, his canny move provided a neat illustration of the cultural climate in early nineteenth-century British literature. world of publishing was continuing to expand, newspapers and periodicals held sway over literary taste, and publicity and fame could be achieved from a single article. This necessity to write to the moment and of the moment was a fact of journalistic life and one of which Hazlitt was only too aware. As he would illustrate in an essay on The Periodical Press for the Edinburgh Review ten years after de Stael's visit to London: we are superficial, let us be brilliant. If we cannot be profound, let us at least be popular (16: 218). After de Stael's continuing British popularity had prompted the re-release of Lettres sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1814), Hazlitt was ready and waiting to respond. If the original text is concerned with the achievement of a celebrated name, Hazlitt too writes about renown, despite his disagreements with parts of de Stael's argument. Suggesting that de Stael's claim that Rousseau lived only in his imagination, from which he consequently derived his theories, is radically wrong, Hazlitt claims that it was his extreme sensibility, his profound egotism which actuated his desire for fame (4: 88). …

„Drugi! Bratstvennyj sonm!“ Marina Cvetaevas Zyklus „Derev'ja“ im Kontext ihrer französischen Lektüre

Article „Drugi! Bratstvennyj sonm!“ Marina Cvetaevas Zyklus „Derev'ja“ im Kontext ihrer französischen Lektüre was published on March 1, 2005 in the journal Zeitschrift für Slawistik (volume 50, issue 1).

La réception de Sieyès par la doctrine publiciste française du XIXème et du XXème siècles

Before being recognized as the author of the theory of the national sovereignty, Sieyes was known as the author of the theory of the limited sovereignty. Those lawyers of the Group of Coppet (particularly Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Stael) were very influenced by his political thought. But this influence can also be found in the 1900 year doctrine, when he is finally conceived as one of the fathers of the liberal school, and an heir of Montesquieu. The French doctrine of Public Law in the 1900 years, tried to show Sieyes as the main author of the national sovereignty theory, and has recognized the real dimension of his thought through the theories of representation and constituent power. Submission date: 17/11/2004 Acceptance date: 23/01/2005

French salons: high society and political sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848

Among the most enduring of French cultural institutions, the salon, is among the most misunderstood. Seen primarily as a venue for apolitical social gatherings, the salon's influence is generally believed to have ended during the French Revolution. In French Salons, Steven Kale challenges conventional thinking about the salon. Drawing on an impressive range of primary sources, he offers a nuanced history of this institution from the eighteenth century through the Revolution of 1848 which emphasizes continuity and evolution over disjuncture and highlights its shifting political character and relevance. Salons, Kale shows, originally provided opportunities for the exchange of literary and philosophical ideas among the French aristocracy. Central to the maintenance of salon culture were salonnieres, aristocratic women such as Madame de Stael who opened their homes to fellow elites and nurtured a sociability that united the members of high society. Salons provided ready-made venues for aristocratic politics during the early years of the French Revolution, when salons were transformed into places where the upper classes could express their political opinions and concerns. Even at the height of the Terror, salons did not dissolve but, rather, were displaced as aristocrats moved their social networks of influence to such cities as Coblenz, Brussels, and London. Napoleon sought to manipulate salon culture for his own ends, but with his fall from power, salons reemerged and proliferated. Although never intended to serve as political clubs, salons became informal sites for the cultivation of political capital and the exchange of political ideas during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy. By 1848, the conditions that sustained aristocratic sociability declined, and salons became increasingly marginal to French public life. At the same time, new political institutions-parties, the press, legislative bodies-emerged that more effectively disseminated and shaped political opinion and led to real political change. Challenging many of the conclusions of recent historiography, including the depiction of salonnieres as influential power brokers, French Salons offers an original, penetrating, and engaging analysis of elite culture and society in France before, during, and after the Revolution.

Corinne - kvinnornas grundläggande modernitetsmyt

Mme de Staél's classical novel Corinne, or Italy (1807) was a most influencial text during the whole 19th century, not least among female writers. In this article, Toril Moi discusses why Corinne is still vital. Departingfrom the contemporary Goethe and his Faust, a text dealing solely with male modernity, and from Hegel's view on women's part in society, Moi states that Corinne can be seen as the prototypical text concerning female modernity. By making Corinne someone who doesn't hesitate to participate in the public sphere, Mme de Stael displays a woman who wants to be acknowledged as a conscious subject, a human being.Thus, Moi argues from a philosophical and historical perspective, Corinne tries to solve a dilemma that characterizes political modernity for women - the conflict between humanity and femininity. The novel is about the almost impossible task to find a voice of one's own in a new world. And it deals with the feminist project of creating a society where women participate fully as individuals, citizens and human beings - without thus losing their femininity. This process is still not over, not even in the most (post) modern Western societies, Moi states. This is why Corinne is still important.

Enlightenment phantasies: cultural identity in France and Germany, 1750-1914

For centuries the histories of France and Germany have been linked in ways productive and destructive, and each nation's sense of itself has often been shaped by admiration of or hostility toward the other. Harold Mah explores the interweaving paths of German and French cultural identity that emerged in the Enlightenment and continued through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Mah argues that the efforts of German and French intellectuals and artists to formulate stable cultural identities constantly collapsed in the face of other powerful images and the rush of history. In Mah's view, these shifting conceptions of cultural identity are problematic phantasies, internally unstable and prone to falling apart under the pressure of events, only to be replaced by new, equally problematic constructions. Mah offers fresh analyses of a wide range of iconic texts and artworks, including those of Jacques-Louis David, de Stael, Diderot, and Rousseau in France and Goethe, Hegel, Herder, Mann, Marx, and Nietzsche in Germany. Mah's book examines how attempts to define cultural identities were caught up in issues of language, gender, classical revival, politics, and modernity. Enlightenment Phantasies presents the shaping of cultural identity in narratives accessible not only to specialists but also to students and all readers concerned with the history of Western culture.

Madame de Staël: ‘Delphine’and ‘Corinne’ by Angelica Goodden (review)

496 Reviews which brings together in convenient form all his political writings published in the period, reveals his responses to events. They changed at a bewildering pace, he felt obliged to keep up with them, and advancing straight ahead was not an option that was open to him for long. Besides, denigrating Napoleon, whose reputation for mili? tary genius inevitably appeared tarnished when foreign soldiers were in Paris, was a simpler task than putting the Bourbons back on their pedestal. Evocations of the glorious past of the French monarchy would carry conviction only with those willing to be persuaded, and the time was hardly right for suggesting that the British consti? tutional settlement was the paradigm forthe future. Though interesting testimony to Chateaubriand's evolving opinions when events moved, the lengthy 'De la monarchie selon la Charte' does not maintain the structural coherence required to match the apparent rigour of its initial argumentative manner. In Chapter xxvn Chateaubriand declares that what a minister needs under a constitutional monarchy 'c'est d'abord la facilite pour la parole'. That talent, at any rate,he displays in spades, ifnot always with finesse. In his discourse for 11 January 1815, for instance, rhetoric jostles with weepy emotion in a fashion that cannot but appear self-serving: 'Quel abime de reflexions!' A rather differentpiece of occasional writing, 'De 1'excommunication des comediens' of February 1815, works round to its ingenious conclusion only after lingering on historical and patristic considerations that sceptics might well write offas so much prevarication. Colin Smethurst presents a score of texts of varying length and significance, taking them fromthe earliest versions and detailing the (relatively minor) changes introduced in reprints. To preserve in the main text the few slips that occurred in the firsteditions and were, as the footnotes observe, promptly corrected when they were reissued is an unusual editorial scruple. A lot of factual information is succinctly supplied. Some? times a little more might have been welcome. In 'Proposition [. . .] relative aux puissances barbaresques', forinstance, a reminder about its author's personal connection with the 'ordre de Malte' would have been helpful. Besides, was Chateaubriand really roused by the plight of the unfortunates taken captive on a certain island?just where and when??or was he in fact stirred by reports of a British assertion of sea power in the Mediterranean? These, however, are only points of detail; readers will thank Smethurst formaking available these reflections of a remarkable man in difficultdays. University of East Anglia Christopher Smith Madame de Stael: 'Delphine'and 'Corinne'. By Angelica Goodden. (Critical Guides to French Texts, 124) London: Grant & Cutler. 2000. 83 pp. ?6.95. ISBN 07293 -0417-5It is good to see Madame de Stael back on the syllabus, a heartening state of affairs further shown by the stop-press addition to this study's bibliography of no fewer than seven items published while it was in proof. This brief guide will certainly be welcomed by undergraduates. Whether many of them will wish to embark on two of Stael's novels is, however, doubtful, so there might have been advantages in selecting one of them and offering fuller treatment. As it is, the book gets offto an uneasy start. Hardly more than a page is devoted to a sketch of Stael's life. It ends with her burial in the family mausoleum at Coppet, 'where the pickled bodies of her parents' awaited her. The terminology is unfortunate, disparagement of other people's funeral arrangements is unworthy, and, if the matter really warrants mention when space is limited, some reference to late eighteenth-century endeavours to stave offbodily corruption would be appropriate. The firstchapter returns to a bustling account of the active part of Stael's life,and Angelica Goodden has already said quite a lot about MLR, 99.2, 2004 497 Delphine and Corinne before coming on to the longer sections devoted in turn to each of these two works. Along with useful facts and insights come some observations that do not quite hit the mark. For instance, afterjustly noting that Stael cultivated the art of conversation, Goodden observes that 'this devotion to the spoken word may explain the verbosity that mars some...

Suzanne Necker's Legacy: Breastfeeding as Metonym in Germaine de Staël's Delphine

The sole treatment of maternal nursing in her fiction makes a surprising entry into the later stages of Germaine de Stael’s long epistolary novel Delphine (Geneva, 1802). What explains its unexpected appearance and its resonance within the novel? Perhaps Stael’s own family history— particularly her mother’s experiences of birth and nursing her daughter at the breast— may help answer the question, and that history is recorded in her mother’s published correspondence. Suzanne Necker’s treatment of birth and nursing in these letters in turn provokes scrutiny of a number of little-explored issues surrounding the impact of conceptions of maternity on French women. If we recognize the clash between conflicting conceptions of mothering, namely an older “cultural” model coming to grips with the ostensible “natural” one proposed by the “new” maternalists of the mid-eighteenth century, how do we see this conflict played out?1 What was the nature of the pressures exerted on women to embrace the vogue of the maternal bond in the last half of the eighteenth century? What maternal style did Germaine’s mother adopt, and what relation did it bear to evolving ideas concerning maternity around her? For what variety of ideas of motherhood did the breast serve as metonym? Along with the family story of her infancy, what did ambient ideas concerning breastfeeding contribute to Germaine de Stael’s

Lands of True and Certain Bounty: The Geographical Theories and Colonization Strategies of Jean Pierre Purry by Arlin C. Migliazzo , Pierrette C. Christianne-Lovrien , Biodun J. Ogundayo (review)

MLRy gg.Zy 2004 491 Lands of True and Certain Bounty: The Geographical Theories and Colonization Strategies ofJean Pierre Purry. Ed. and annotated with introductions to the texts by Arlin C. Migliazzo. Translations from the French by Pierrette C. Christianne-Lovrien and 'Biodun J. Ogundayo. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2002. 201pp. $39.50. ISBN i-5759i-?54-3While the title of this book might initially suggest that it is a monograph, it in fact consists of a critical edition and translation of four works, now virtually unobtainable in the original French version, by the Swiss Protestant colonizer Jean Pierre Purry (1675-1736). The texts are entitled: (1) Memoire sur le pais des Cafres, et la terre de Nuyts [. . .] (Amsterdam, 1718); (2) Second memoiresur le pais de Cafres, et la terrede Nuyts [. . .] (Amsterdam, 1718); (3) Memoirepresente d Sa Gr. MylordDue de Newcas? tle [. . .] sur I'etat de la Caroline [. . .] (London, 1724); (4) Description abregee de VEtat present de la Caroline meridionale, nouvelle edition (Neuchatel, [1732]). Purry believed that territories lying in the vicinity of 33 degrees of latitude enjoyed an optimal climate that rendered life easier and agriculture more fruitfulthan in other regions ofthe earth. He was thereforeconvinced that the colonizing effortsof the principal maritime nations of Europe should be directed towards settling areas enjoying the advantages of this 'fifthzone'. In the firsttwo texts, he attempted to persuade the administrators of the Dutch East India Company to build on the success of their settlements at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Indies by creating colonies in south-east Africa (the pais des Cafres or Kaffraria, roughly the province of Natal) and in South Australia (the terre de Nuyts). These efforts came to nothing and, after unavailing attempts to interest the French authorities in his project, he began a campaign to gain British backing forintensive colonization by Swiss Protestants of a frontierregion of the then province of South Carolina, that was also situated in the favoured zone. In this he was ultimately successful and the firstgroup of emigrants left Switzerland for their life in the New World in the autumn of 1732. The town of Purrysburg on the Savannah River remains his memorial. In his introduction and notes Arlin Migliazzo lays little stress on some of the uglier aspects of colonialism that emerge from Purry's texts, notably his contempt forindigenous peoples and his untroubled acceptance of slavery. Nor is much attempt made to insert Purry's geographical ideas into contemporary debates over the desirability of colonization, or to discuss the many manifestations of the theory of climate in discourse from the Renaissance until at least Madame de Stael. None the less, the critical apparatus of this edition reaches a high level of scholarship, especially as pertains to the colonial history of South Carolina. As to the translations, the translator of the firsttwo texts seems to me to make heavy weather of them, though the other two read pretty well. Whatever its flaws, this book makes available texts of considerable interest and it therefore serves a useful purpose. University of Wales Swansea Michael Cardy Francoise de Graffigny:choix de lettres. Ed. by E. Showalter. Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation. 2001. vi + 299pp. ?14.50. ISBN 0-7294-0781-0. Resurgent interest in Francoise de Graffigny's innovative novel Lettres d'une Peru? vienne has restored to this writer something of the celebrity she enjoyed in the last ten years of her life. Less well known, but no less remarkable, is her correspon? dence of some 2,500 letters, written almost daily to Francois-Antoine Devaux over a period of twenty years. Since 1985, a group of scholars led by Alan Dainard have been editing these letters; volume viii (of a projected fifteen) was published by the Voltaire Foundation in 2003. This anthology has been selected and edited by Eng- ...

From Ideal to Ambiguity: Johannes von Muller, Clausewitz, and the People in Arms

In the debate at the end of the Enlightenment over the place of armed forces and war in society, Johannes [von] Müller's Histories of the Swiss attracted attention as a work of historical interpretation and as a political statement. Müller's idealization of the free "people in arms" is contrasted with Clausewitz's argument that ideals and self-interest contrary to the ideals may be expressed simultaneously by individuals and societies, both qualities made historically effective by people's innate willingness to use violence. Müller's and Clausewitz's positions are paradigmatic of views that continue to influence historical interpretations and political expectations to this day.

An Historical Survey of the Science of Beauty and the Literature on the Subject by František s> Palacký Tomáš Hlobil , Derek Paton , Marzia Paton (review)

92 SEER, 82, I, 2004 Palacky,Frantisek.AnHistorical Survey oftheScience ofBeautyandtheLiterature on the Subject.Ed. by Tomas Hlobil. Translated from the Czech by Derek and Marzia Paton. Palacky University, Olomouc, 2002. liv+ 95 pp. Notes. Bibliographies. Price unknown. WHILE still an undergraduate at the Lutheran Lyceum in Pressburg, the later official historian of Bohemia, Austroslav, knight, member of the Austrian upper house and, finally, elderly rebel, Franz/Frantisek Palacky (i 798- I 876), began his scholarly career by anonymously co-writing a volume on prosody. Hlobil has now edited, with an extensive informative Introduction in English, another of Palacky's early works, 'Prehled dejin krasovedy a jeji literatury (written I82 I, published in the periodical Krok, I823). Palacky's rather cumbersome original is printed parallel to an ingenious and far less cumbersome English translation. He cannot quite bring himself to apologize for this style in this essay's unfinished cousin, 'Krasoveda, cili o krase a umene, knihy patery' ('The science of beauty, or: Five studies in beauty and art', published in periodicals, I82 I, I827, I829), where he writes that 'philosophical language proved still to be too difficult for the readership of the time' (Palacky, Radhost I, Prague, I87 I, p. 333). Hlobil chose to publish 'Prehled' for two reasons, both of which reflect the huge post- I 989 Czech academic interest in the National Revival: first, because its cousin 'Krasoveda' constitutes the earliest Revival attempt 'to write philosophy in the Czech language (p. xi) (one assumes Hlobil discounts Antonin Marek's Logika,neboUmnice[Logic, I820] since it was largely a translation ofJ. G. C. Kiesewetter); secondly, because 'Piehled' made Palacky 'the first European historian of aesthetics' (p. xxxiv). Hlobil persuades the reader that Palacky's essay was of an entirely different nature from Benedikt Joseph Koller's Entwurfzur Geschichte undLiteratur derAesthetik (Regensburg, I 799), which had been largely an annotated bibliography. Palacky apparently did not know Koller's work and was 'convinced of the originality of his essay' (p. xxxiii). One has to trust Palacky, and Hlobil, who manifests punctilious scholarship in this edition; though insignificant on this point, coincidence does link Koller with Palacky. From I823, the publication date of 'Prehled', onwards until their deaths, Palacky was an associate and then friend of the Sternberg brothers, the highly educated Caspar and Franz; Caspar Count Sternberg had been prelate and diplomat in Regensburg for over twenty years; during part of that time Koller was secretary to the Austrian legation. The dryasdust 'Pfehled' assesses the contribution to aesthetic thought of Plato and Aristotle, omits vulgar Rome (there as elsewhere the impact of Herder's conception of the history of civilization is palpable), but does have something to say about the neo-Platonists; then, however, he jumps straight to the Italian Renaissance, then to the French, then the British and, finally, the Germans who have produced the most adequate enquiries into the nature of Beauty so far. He hopes however, that under the impact of the magnificent poetry of Scott and Byron the British will regain the lead they had had in the early eighteenth century and develop aesthetics even further. Hlobil's research has been primarily into Palacky's British sources. He has discovered a 'striking discrepancy between the small number of British essays on aesthetics the REVIEWS 93 reading of which can be demonstrated, and the great number of works and authorsPalackydiscusses'in 'Prehled'(p. xlvi). Fromhis diaryone learnsthat, while still in Pressburg, he had been able to borrow from the equerry to Archduke Grazhalkovich, a certain Mr Egan, four works:Joseph Addison's 'The Pleasure of the Imagination' (I712), Mark Akenside's ThePleasures of Imagination (1774), Hugh Blair'sLectures onRhetoric andBelles-Lettres (I783), and Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism(I 762). Otherwise Palackyappearsto have used only secondary sources, his much admired Friedrich Bouterwek's Geschichte derPoesieundBeredsamkeit (i 8oi - I9), various Britishencyclopaedias, book-reviewsfromthe Edinburgh Review and Madame de Stael'sDeL'Allemagne. Palacky, Hlobil informs us, had read many more primary sources in French and Italian, let alone German, with the corresponding result that his vast bibliographycontainsfewerinaccuraciesconcerningworksin theselanguages. The term kraisoveda (sensiblytranslatedas 'science of beauty')for 'aesthetics' looks like an example of a Revivalist neo-classicalcompound, created for...

Les Bons Contes et les bons mots de ‘Gil Bias’ by Hubert de Phalèse (review)

MLR, 99.1, 2004 199 Finally Mme de Stael heralds Romanticism with the 'Histoire de Pauline', so sensi? tive and so tragically misunderstood. The journey accomplished in this vast collection can, however, be summed up nicely from the appendix of paratexts. The first(1717) is subtitled 'Au Beau Sexe' and begins 'Mes Dames' (a very small portion of that sex); the last (1795), subtitled 'L'Ombre d'Helvetius', addresses '[l]es peuples a venir, 6 Francais!' (pp. 1273, I3I4)-A century of stories, the story of a century. Birkbeck College, London Robin Howells Les Bons Contes et les bons mots de 'Gil Blas'. By Hubert de Phalese. (Collection Cap' Agreg 14) [Paris]: Nizet. 2002. 158 pp. ?17. ISBN 2-7078-1271-4. This title forms part of a series designed for advanced university students, written by committee under the pseudonym of Hubert de Phalese. The stated aim of the collection is to explore texts using the methods of information science, a point seemingly taken to heart by the authors of this title. The team have made good use of the Frantext database to search the text of Gil Blas, as well as other novels published in the firsthalf ofthe eighteenth century, to provide a comprehensive lexical breakdown ofthe novel. This elicits some interesting data on vocabulary used by Lesage in this novel and his other works, compared to that of other contemporary novelists. The results of this approach are clearly presented; and the author of this section extracts some salient conclusions concerning, for example, the importance of dialogue (with the frequency of subject pronouns, particularly in the 'tu' form, and verbs such as 'repondit', 'repliquai', 'repartit', 'poursuivit', etc), and the unusual frequency of the indefinite article, 'un' (the author points to its use to designate something or someone as yet unknown, which, as he explains, is a 'situation tres courante dans ce roman ou les personnages vont de decouverte a decouverte' (p. 69)). However, the weight of data means that the text is sometimes short on analysis, largely content with an example-based approach, which will no doubt provide helpful revision material for the students at whom the book is aimed. The collaborative authorial approach does cause some problems forthe reader, and overall, the text would have benefited from a greater degree of editorial attention. In particular, the very differentstyles of the authors of various sections do not add to the coherence of the book. Frequently, the text is disjointed, with similar points being made within a few paragraphs of each other. Well-worn passages of the novel are quoted in support of differentpoints under differentheadings in the text: a greater variety of quotations would have added interest and provided a more complete reading of the novel. The book is also occasionally let down by its typography: one particular frustration was the map plotting the travels of Gil Blas. The near illegibility of place names and the arrows which are supposed to show the direction of travel spoilt what would have been an interesting reference tool. Given the scope and purpose of the collection, though, this title can certainly be forgiven for its notational style and the numerous lists and tables. With a logical, user-friendly structure, a useful section on the context of the novel, and an exhaustive glossary, itwill surely fulfilits purpose as a reference book; and the focus on software-generated lexical analysis will also provide a starting point for more advanced researchers. St John's College, Oxford Alison Roberts ...

Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives, Work and Culture ed. by Linda V. Troost, and: Women Writing 1550–1750 ed. by Jo Wallwork, Paul Salzman (review)

MLR, 105.1, 2010 203 Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in theirLives,Work, and Culture, vol. v. Ed. by Linda V. Troost. New York: AMS. 2008. x+326 pp. $124.50. ISBN 978 0-404-64705-6. Eighteenth-Century Women is an annual essay collection with a few reviews, now up to its fifth volume. Although the subjects engage with different areas, the whole enterprise reminds one of the need?perhaps increasing in an age of gender studies?to think about women aswomen. Several essays deal with representations ofwomen bymen. Charles Haskell Hinnant looks at allegorical portraits ofRestora tion court beauties, particularly Sir Peter Lely's depictions of Barbara Villiers, in the light of political and sexual currents swirling round their sitters' reputations, to illuminate their complicated public postures. JuliaDabbs looks at stories about Italian women artists?Giovanna Fratellini, Maria Barbo (aminiaturist), and Ros alba Carriera?to show that 'therewas a price that thewoman artist paid forbeing gifted, at least according to her male biographers, and thatwas ugliness' (p. 37). Logan JamesConnors reads a couple of plays byMarivaux and Diderot topropose that the former has amore gynocentric dynamic, though his discussion of female agency on stage is so lightly contextualized?there isnothing about the process of production or reception?that more questions are raised than answered. The other essays are on stronger ground with a different sort of suggestiveness?discussions ofwomen's lives are used to frame discussion ofworks, and vice versa. One might wish for more explicit theorizing of relations between lives,works, and culture but thematerials do supplymuch practical food for thought.Marilyn Francus's careful study of Elizabeth Allen Burney, Frances Burney's stepmother, iswittily entitled 'Stepmommy Dearest', and makes a persuasive case for a woman who deserves a better press than she got from the Burney offspring. The essays do not overtly have much in common, apart from a general commit ment to eighteenth-century women, but the volume does set up some interesting resonances. An essay by Pam Lieske on Magdalen House narratives and their sig nificance for Frances Sheridan's life and Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph keeps fallen women in view; though Lieske reads the novel rather debatably as rela tively closed to ambiguity, the ideological charge around prostitution is felt. It resurfaces in Laura Engel's essay on Mary Wells, around mad women. Wells's life was extraordinary?theatrical on stage and off, she puzzled and frustrated her contemporaries: was she mad? Or acting mad? When she retreated at one point to the north coast ofNorfolk, the locals took her forMarie Antoinette: how else to explain beauty, elegance, rich clothes, and broken English? Lieske comments: 'Wells's mockery ofmajesty reflects her own desire to be worshipped at the same time thather subversive performance demonstrates that theperception of royalty is artificial?anyone can play a queen' (p. 200). Queens, fallenwomen, mad women? women's agency is fragile in the eighteenth century, and both fallen women and mad women were likely to have their children taken away. Olympe de Gouges and Germaine de Stael fly the flag for powerful intellectual women?the former's play VEntree du Dumouriez a Bruxelles, described as a la 204 Reviews Shakespeare' by one reviewer (and not approvingly!), is discussed byMegan Con way as a chauvinist epic, which failed on the stage in part because of the authors vigorous stand against the execution of Louis XVI. When Dumouriez defected to theAustrians later in 1793, an 'unfortunate choice of protagonists', as Conway puts it (p. 235) saw de Gouge herself condemned to the guillotine. The French Revo lution provides Madelyn Gurtwith with two further occasions to discuss women's agency: Chenier's play about Charles IX which associated Marie-Antoinette ne gatively with theMedici, and Francois Chabot versus Claire Lacombe in a fierce rhetorical clash.What Gutwith calls 'small but smoldering' (p. 237) moments par ticularize the expulsion ofwomen from public life in republic and monarchy That sets up nicely the final essay, by Barbara Ann Day-Hickman, on de StaeT's relations with du Pont de Nemours, a fellow liberal and friendwho proved unsympathetic about her exile and her troubles; tactlessly he wrote thathe wished he had her time to...

Germaine de Stael, George Sand, and the Victorian woman as artist

Germaine de Stael, George Sand, and the Victorian woman as artist

Alfred de Musset's Romantic Irony

The year of 1797, though somewhat arbitrary in terms of historical significance in German and French drama, marks German philosopher and theorist Friedrich Schlegel's initial efforts to establish irony as a philosophical as well as literary concept. The concept of irony was then being rediscovered and redefined by the early Romantics and is now considered by scholars of Romanticism essential to the understanding of the Romantic doctrines. As Friedrich and his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel drew inspiration from the early (Shakespeare and Cervantes) as well as the contemporary moderns (Sterne, Diderot, and Goethe) in analyzing and theorizing art and literature, the French also noticed the dominance of Shakespeare in English and German literary criticism as well as of eighteenth-century sentimentality. Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy were widely read in France and gave him a near celebrity status during his visits to numerous literary salons in Paris. Diderot deliberately copied Sterne's model when writing his Jacques le fataliste and prompted the French literary circles to reflect on the use of humor and the role of the author in the creative process and the relation to his work and audience. The transition from the classic to the is most notably fostered by Mme de Stael and her group at Coppet. Under the impact of eighteenth-century sentimentality, the promotion of German literary theory by the Coppet Group as well as the anti-classicist sentiment developed within the French literary circle, a number of writers, such as Hugo, Stendhal, Musset, and Vigny, produced works that recognize the merits of the new Romantic ideals and advocate what their German counterparts had done decades before. In this article, I will examine the dramatic works of Musset in the light of Romantic irony, an irony that synthesizes conflicting forces to produce a universal type of poetry and reveals the nature of artistic creation by a self-critical writing process of the author while preserving the art work's function to describe the author's duty to the society and to reflect his own time. Among the French Romantic dramatists, the theories of Hugo, Vigny, and Musset on modern drama and the role of the author bear most striking resemblance to that of Friedrich Schlegel. This is in no way accidental. The Schlegels' discussions of humor, irony, and poetry are not unfamiliar in the French literary circle thanks to translations of the Schlegel brothers' works, the Schlegels' debates with the French literary and publishing circles about the Romantic/classic contrast, and the publications, Stael's De l'Allemagne in particular, and literary discussions of the Coppet group. Nor has the subject gone altogether unnoticed. At the time when Hugo and Vigny were primarily poets, the younger Musset also started his career writing poetry. However, he found himself lacking passion as a poet, and after the indifferent reception of his first staged play La Nuit venitienne in 1830, he also lost enthusiasm for writing plays for the stag. Instead, as the title of Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil (1832) indicates, he went on to write plays for reading. Most of these were not meant to be performed at the time of their writing, though they were staged later, thanks to the advancement of stage technology. Quite ironically, his place as one of the greatest dramatists of his time was established through these then unstageable works. These works, along with those of Hugo and Vigny, are generally considered the best exemplars of Romantic irony in nineteenth-century French drama. Some personal traits of Musset group him with Hugo and Vigny, while others distinguish him from the latter. On one hand, Musset belongs to a younger generation of the French Romantics (with Gautier, Nerval, and others) than that of Hugo and Vigny (who are his seniors by eight and thirteen years respectively). Yet, though only in his twenties, he produced, contemporaneously with them and all in the short span of two years (1833-34), such brilliant dramatic works as Les Caprices de Marianne, Fantasio, On ne badine pas avec l'amour and Lorenzaccio. …

Masculinity, Femininity, Solidarity: Emilia Pardo Bazan's Construction of Madame de Stael and George Sand

The Galician author, Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921), who introduced first French naturalism and then the Russian novel to Spain, was an accomplished writer of novels, short stories, and essays such as the literary criticism I examine here. In addition to her notorious La cuestión palpitante (1883), an introduction to French naturalism and a general literary history of France, Pardo Bazán wrote extensively on French literature. From 1910 to 1914, she produced a three-volume study, La literatura francesa moderna, with volumes titled El romanticismo, La transición, and El naturalismo. She also taught literature briefly at the university level (1916), and her lectures on French lyricism appeared posthumously as El lirismo en la poesía francesa (1923).

Hugo’s Orientales Revisited

Ever since Sainte-Beuve praised the eclat eblouissant, the dazzling vividness of their colors, the poems of Les Orientales have been regarded as a masterpiece of colorful pittoresque, a poetry of light, a perfect example of how poetic imagery can be enriched and inspiration renewed by exoticism. Critics are not often so persistently unanimous, especially in judging poetry susceptible of various interpretations. Can it be that this consensus is a continuing echo of the surprise the poems aroused in their first generation of readers? And can it be that the initial surprise was due to the contrast between the Orientales and its background--the greyish vagueness, the even tenor of classical poetry? Can it be that Hugo's text, judged on its own, without historical considerations, would be differently appraised? Let us first reexamine the allegedly dominating role of light in his imagery. The most recent critic and editor of Hugo's poetic works, Albouy, declares once more that Les Orientales temoignent de l'ivresse verbale et de l'amour pour soleil qui sont des traits eminemment hugoliens; (1) he quotes as further evidence what Hugo once said of himself: Il aime soleil. This quotation, however, does not mean what it seems to mean: in context (the preface to Les Rayons et les Ombres--a title, by the way, that equates shadow and light) soleil is a mere metonymy which stands for Mediterranean literatures as opposed by Madame de Stael to those of Northern Europe. This image, and the examples Hugo gives, concern clarity of style, not actual sunlight: vague et demi-jour il les admet plus rarement dans l'expression Il a toujours eu un gout vif pour forme meridionale et precise. Il aime soleil. La Bible est son livre. Virgile et Dante sont ses divins maitres. The fact remains, however, that perceptive critics, whatever their differences of temperament, agree on the importance of light. Emery, for example, sees in the poems la recherche des impressions lumineuses les plus intenses. Barrere states that the main characters of Les Orientales, which celebrate the Hellenic war of independence, are not the Greek and Turkish heroes but le soleil, lune, toutes les varietes de lumiere. Elsewhere Barrere summarizes the book as a hymne au soleil. De lui l'imagination attend que sa reverie prenne forme Disparait-il, l'imagination semble frappee d'impuissance: Devant sombre hiver de Paris qui bourdonne Ton soleil d'Orient s'eclipse et t'abandonne. Ton beau reve d'Asie avorte ... (2) But these last three lines, it seems to me, actually demonstrate that Hugo's imagination is stimulated, not paralyzed; the poet is not stricken by impotence but puts it to use as a fruitful theme. The poem is written, precisely, about the failure of a dream, not in spite of it. In other words, the poet finds inspiration not in the sun but in its death--not in its splendor but in its extinction. Further, this is not an isolated instance. The sun is in fact rarely evoked as a source of light; far more often it is a symbol, or a character in the great cosmic drama. And when it is a luminary for him, Hugo significantly prefers moments like dusk, when sunlight reddens and loses its brilliance. At that time of day his contemplation of the sun turns into such melancholy meditation as we find in the Reverie: Oh! Laissez-moi! C'est l'heure ou l'horizon qui fume Cache un front inegal sous un cercle de brume L'heure ou l'astre geant rougit et disparait. (3) Obviously Hugo is not interested here in light but it the rising tide of darkness. Indeed, he eliminated the words astre de feu, which appeared in a first version, because they called attention to the light; he chose instead to suggest the immensity of the meteor, the image of a dying giant. The epigraph, a quotation from Dante, further obscures the atmosphere: Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aer bruno, etc. …