French Romance Research Articles

Le chien, l’enfant et le serpent

Abstract Starting from the tale “Canis” as it appears in the French Roman des Sept Sages in verse (version K) and in the Dolopathos of Jean de Haute-Seille, as well as in its adaptation into Old French by Herbert, I will discuss the complex imaginary relationships between the human and animal actors in a tale which recounts a family drama. Our attention will be focused on the presence of snakes, which maintain a strange familiarity with domestic space. In this respect, different versions of the fable of “The Man and the Snake” will be discusses, as they often include, like the story of “Canis,” the murder of a child by a snake. I propose to consider a political reading of these narratives of negotiated cohabitation and shared food whose implications go beyond the private sphere to take on ethical significance in a feudal context.

Valentin and his Wild Brother in European Literature: How French is a French Romance?

The medieval romance about the two brothers Valentin and Orson (also known as Nameless) crossed various linguistic and cultural borders in the European Middle Ages and beyond. It is said to have originated in a Francophone context, but the French origin, which is believed to be a chanson de geste, has not been preserved – the earliest surviving sources are three Middle Dutch fragments. The different versions of the tale are generally divided into two strands: the first covers versions in Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, Middle High German, and Old Swedish, and the second includes versions in French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Icelandic, and Yiddish. In this article, we give an up-to-date overview of the two strands and raise the question whether Valentin should be considered as a primarily French tradition. We argue that Valentin cannot be understood only in a monolingual or national context, and that a linear model of transmission does not do justice to the complexity of this tradition. We consider what it means to approach Valentin as a shared European narrative, how each version places itself in this larger tradition, and what insight this approach can give us into the tension as well as fruitful co-existence between local and supralocal. By putting the different versions of the tale in dialogue and paying attention to the places and social networks along which they travelled, the article presents a new way of understanding a literary tradition that once enthralled audiences from Flanders to Silesia, and from Venice to Sweden.

‘…At odds with heaven and hell, the gods and mankind’. Woland and the Count of Monte Cristo

Historians of literature have often studied M. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita [Master i Margarita] in order to identify the sources that fuelled the author’s imagination. Considered in the context of a common European literary tradition of the 19th and 20th cc., Bulgakov’s oeuvre may reveal parallels with works of other European literatures. The article contains a comparative analysis of characters and plot lines in The Master and Margarita and The Count of Monte Cristo, a novel by A. Dumas (père), which reveals similarities in plot devices and character portrayals. Similar, too, is the period when the novel takes place — shortly after the shock of a revolution. The researcher suggests that both novels may have targeted a post-revolutionary society with ridicule and, at times, censure. The similarities between the two novels may stem from French romanticism’s enduring influence on Russian literature. At the same time, it is not impossible for the parallels with The Count of Monte Cristo to have been inspired, at least in part, by new Russian translations of Dumas’s novels in the 1920s — 1930s.

Бинарная оппозиция «блондинка/брюнетка» в раннем французском романтизме (Ж. де Сталь «Коринна, или Италия»)

The study aims to identify the features and conceptualisation of the “blonde/brunette” binary opposition in the literary text of French Romanticism using the example of G. de Staël’s novel “Corinne, or Italy” (1807). The paper examines the “blonde/brunette” binary opposition in the creative work of a XIX-century French writer. Despite the fact that there are studies addressing various types of binaries, the creative work of French romanticists, who formed the basis of different mythological oppositions, has not become the object of special analysis, and the blondes/brunettes opposition has not been highlighted in the literary text, which accounts for the scientific originality of the presented paper. As a result of the analysis, it can be concluded that G. de Staël forms the basis of the stereotypical perception of blondes and brunettes in literature at the compositional level within the system of characters, at the universal level - within the boundaries of the national character. At the ideological level of physical/psychological images, the blonde/brunette types became entrenched in literature as a binary opposition, which served as an example for the next generation of writers.

Стоицизм одинокого волка. Романтическая эстетика Альфреда де Виньи и ее литературные абрисы. Статья вторая

The article reveals the specificity of Alfred de Vigny’s aesthetic views and literary work which illustrates his original position in the context of the aesthetics of French romanticism. Alfred de Vigny shared its basic principles related to the conviction in the inherent value of art, the priority of artistic perfection, idealization and symbolization, and an increased interest in the national origins of artistic creativity and the character of a romantic hero — sensitive, passionate, melancholic, and at the same time egocentric. However, he gave them the romantic-heroic connotation of the philosophy of stoicism, which defined the semantic dominant of his creative work and the aura of masculine restraint inherent in it. His reflections on the truth and fiction in art, artistic images and symbols, the features of a historical novel, the character of a romantic drama, and the figure of a banished poet largely paved the way for the further development of these subjects both in theory and artistic practice. Most of the characters of his symbolic plays, novels, and poems are self-absorbed, proud loners, marked by a tragic worldview, who stoically endure the adversities that fall to their lot but are unable to avoid fatal outcomes. Alfred de Vigny considered himself an “epic moralist” focused on issues of honor, duty, and conscience. Another distinctive feature of his position is not only the interest in national history but also a direct appeal to its vicissitudes in his artistic creativity, as well as conceptualization of ways to understand history in art. The rich symbolism of de Vigny’s works, their high artistry, a deep understanding of the tragic fate of the artist, a cursed poet, had a significant impact on the aesthetics and poetics of symbolism. Additionally, Alfred de Vigny’s philosophical and aesthetic ideas of abandonment of man into existence, the tragic nature of his lot, hopeless loneliness, inescapable longing, and despair, which were reflected in the pessimistic tone of many of his works, had a considerable influence on the creative activity of French existentialists and their followers in the 20th–21st centuries.

Between Novels and Songs: Eliza Haywood’s French Romance

Between Novels and Songs: Eliza Haywood’s French Romance

Study on Michelet's View of Women

In recent years, Jules Michelet has been increasingly studied, but most of them focus on his Romantic Historiography as a whole. As a representative figure of French Romantic Historiography in the 19th century, Michelet paid special attention to women in addition to country and revolutionary history. This paper analyzes Michelet's view of women in terms of his attitude toward women, the moral qualities he advocated, and the ideal social relations he constructed for women. Michelet justified the historically stigmatized women and emphasized the outstanding contribution of women in French history. Michelet saw tolerance and elegance as inherently virtues of women, on the basis of which the ideal woman should also be humble, chaste, and patriotic. Michelet regarded the "supernature", which is a combination of the spiritual qualities of both genders as the perfect one, and he constructed a set of gender relations in which both sides are unified, complementary, harmonious and even equal. He valued the social value of women's pregnancy and child education, and encouraged them to devote themselves to society and the nation without leaving the family in order to achieve the unity of the people. There is no denying that Michelet's view of women is limited by the times, but it is still highly progressive and noteworthy.

The Face and Faciality in Medieval French Literature, 1170–1390. By Alice Hazard

This book is a challenging and inventive study of the face and faciality in medieval French literature. Alice Hazard’s core project is to rethink faciality, defined here as ‘the quality of being a face’ (p. 202), in a way that destabilizes and uncouples this concept from its associations and apparent affinities with the physiological face. Hazard also challenges the traditional view that the human face in medieval literature might offer any kind of reliable guide to individual subjectivity or interiority. She is more interested in the philosophy of faciality and the shifting planes and patterns of perception in medieval literature — its ‘engagement with the productive illusion of interiority’ (p. 146) — than, for example, the face as the site of gesture, physiognomic character, the expression of emotion, or the marker of ethnic or racial difference. The book’s conclusion makes it clear that, for Hazard, the face is not a text to be deciphered; but, in its mutability and instability, it is a ‘literary motif, a cultural model and a philosophical construct’ (p. 206). Four core chapters consider the face in Arthurian romance, in ‘doodles’ in the decorated margins of manuscripts (p. 82), in the opening scenes of Le Roman de la Rose, and in selected fabliaux. All four chapters explore the inherent and productive instability of faciality. Hazard draws her theoretical inspiration variously from Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Lacan, Silvan S. Tomkins, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Judith Butler, and others, while also engaging with recent scholarship and criticism on medieval French literature. Most of her primary texts and her theoretical approaches are oriented towards secular literature. This means that her reading of Levinas, for example, is somewhat selective, as she interprets his conception of otherness through the face primarily as a relationship with another subject, not with the divine. Throughout this book, Hazard consistently steers us away from the face as a stable sign that might be confined to or co-extensive with the physiological features on the front of our heads. For instance, her reading of the armed and helmeted combatants in Old French romances leads to a very subtle argument about the dispersal of faciality onto ‘codified facial surfaces’ such as the knight’s helmet and shield which both constitute the ‘facing surface’ of the knight and therefore, his face (pp. 148, 207). The chapter on Le Roman de la Rose uses Deleuze and Guattari to read the wall around the garden of Deduit as an example of faciality, while the discussion of the relationship between faces and genitalia in the fabliaux affirms how little one needs, in the surreal and improbable world of these stories, to make a face (p. 176). This book reads like a PhD that has been adapted — not entirely successfully — for publication as a monograph. It is somewhat weighed down by the burden of its theoretical material, and its prose is careful and dutiful rather than elegant or lively; nevertheless, it is a strikingly original book that makes a powerful intervention into contemporary theories of the face and faciality.

Another Fragment of the Old French Romance Meliacin, and Some Observations on Its Place among the Other Earliest Witnesses to the Text

This article presents a small fragment (only 42 x 138 mm) of a leaf from a manuscript of the Old French poem Meliacin, which once formed part of the stock of the manuscript dealer Erik von Scherling (1907–1956), and came to light in a private collection in 2009. Unknown to the present author, another similarly sized fragment from the same parent-codex, discovered in the binding of a printed book dated 1699, had been published in 2016 by Aurélie Houdebert and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín. The physical materiality of the fragment discussed here agrees with many of Houdebert’s and Ó Cróinín’s conclusions about the dismembered and otherwise lost parent manuscript, and perhaps takes further what we can say about that original codex, its place among the other early witnesses to the text and its intended audience or owners. Furthermore, this scrap of a leaf has more to tell us about the uses and reuses of manuscripts, as distinctive cuts and red ink staining show it to have been reused in early printing as a frisket, most probably in the sixteenth century, before a final reuse to strengthen a later book binding.

Loss in French Romantic Art, Literature, and Politics by Jonathan Ribner

Founded in 2002, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide is a scholarly, refereed e-journal devoted to the study of nineteenth-century painting, sculpture, graphic arts, photography, architecture, and decorative arts across the globe.

French Romance, Medieval Sweden and the Europeanisation of Culture by Sophia Lodén

Reviewed by: French Romance, Medieval Sweden and the Europeanisation of Culture by Sophia Lodén Joseph M. Sullivan sophia lodén, French Romance, Medieval Sweden and the Europeanisation of Culture. Studies in Old Norse Literature. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2021. Pp. 216. isbn: 978–1–84384–582–9. $99. In this groundbreaking study of the reception of French literature in Sweden, Sofia Lodén convincingly shows how extensively Sweden and Europe's north were integrated into the larger medieval European intellectual and courtly currents radiating out of France from the beginning of the twelfth century. As Lodén demonstrates, the skillful translation into Swedish of narratives originating in French contributed in fundamental ways to the civilizing process and the Europeanization of Sweden from the beginning of the Late Middle Ages through the beginning of the sixteenth century. As her central case studies, the author analyzes four Swedish translations of courtly narratives alongside their ultimately French-language sources. To each of these case studies she devotes a chapter, in which she applies a separate, carefully chosen theoretical framework. Thus, she discusses the French Valentin et Orson and its fifteenth-century Swedish adaptation in terms of their authors' constructions of beastliness and the place of the animal alongside the human. And in a brilliant discussion of Paris et Vienne and its fragmentary Swedish adaptation from the sixteenth century, she employs ideas of gender to illuminate how these texts construct masculinities. Her remaining two case studies are devoted to narratives from the most important set of secular texts in the Old Swedish courtly canon, that is, from the so-called Eufemiavisor (or Tales of Eufemia), a group of three narratives from the early fourteenth century that were commissioned by the German-born Norwegian queen Eufemia, probably as political gifts for the Swedish court. For the Eufemiavisor's version of the Old French Floire et Blancheflor and its French sources, Lodén takes a close look at the very different roles that childhood plays in those texts. And with the best known of the Eufemiavisor, and the most influential of all secular courtly narratives in Old Swedish, namely, Herr Ivan—the masterful Old Swedish translation of Chrétien's Yvain—Lodén again turns to ideas of gender, this time however showing how varied the portrayal of female characters is in the French original and in its Swedish rewriting. Lodén's decision to employ different theoretical lenses for each of her case studies is admirable. Specifically, it allows her both to make use of some of the most significant current analytical frameworks in medieval studies and to choose that particular framework which works best to illuminate the particular narrative that the individual chapter treats. In so doing, Lodén deftly avoids a mistake common to many otherwise solid monographs, which use only one dominant theoretical framework throughout, even when that framework does not lend itself equally well to all the artifacts a monograph discusses. As if the author recognized that most readers would be interested in only one or two particular chapters, and not necessarily in reading her entire study, Lodén has chosen wisely to make each of her case studies stand on its own. In fact, all four case studies can be read independently and, indeed, out of order with no loss of comprehensibility. I would recommend, however, that those readers who wish [End Page 99] to read only one or two chapters also read the book's introduction and conclusion, both of which are excellent and which together concisely summarize the study's most important overall findings. Several other factors also make Lodén's study important and, as a work of comparative literature scholarship, exemplary. Thus, her focus is not limited to the consideration of Swedish translations and their French sources. Instead, Lodén extensively consults versions of these originally French narratives in other medieval languages as well, including, for instance, in medieval Spanish, Italian, German, Icelandic, and English. While holding so many strands simultaneously in the discussion of a particular narrative is perhaps the most challenging task of the comparativist scholar, Lodén manages such analysis almost effortlessly. (Only in the case of Floire et Blancheflor does...

Стоицизм одинокого волка. Романтическая эстетика Альфреда де Виньи и ее литературные абрисы. Статья первая

The article reveals the specific nature of Alfred de Vigny’s aesthetic views and literary work which illustrates his original position in the context of the aesthetics of French romanticism. Alfred de Vigny shared its basic principles related to the conviction in the inherent value of art, the priority of artistic perfection, idealization and symbolization, and an increased interest in the national origins of artistic creativity and the character of a romantic hero — sensitive, passionate, melancholic, and at the same time egocentric. However, he gave them the romantic-heroic connotation of the philosophy of stoicism, which defined the semantic dominant of his creative work and the aura of masculine restraint inherent in it. His reflections on the truth and fiction in art, artistic images and symbols, the features of a historical novel, the character of a romantic drama, and the figure of a banished poet largely paved the way for the further development of these subjects both in theory and artistic practice. Most of the characters of his symbolic plays, novels, and poems are self-absorbed, proud loners, marked by a tragic worldview, who stoically endure the adversities that fall to their lot but are unable to avoid fatal outcomes. Alfred de Vigny considered himself an “epic moralist” focused on issues of honor, duty, and conscience. Another distinctive feature of his position is not only the interest in national history but also a direct appeal to its vicissitudes in his artistic creativity, as well as conceptualization of ways to understand history in art. The rich symbolism of de Vigny’s works, their high artistry, a deep understanding of the tragic fate of the artist, a cursed poet, had a significant impact on the aesthetics and poetics of symbolism. Additionally, Alfred de Vigny’s philosophical and aesthetic ideas of abandonment of man into existence, the tragic nature of his lot, hopeless loneliness, inescapable longing, and despair, which were reflected in the pessimistic tone of many of his works, had a considerable influence on the creative activity of French existentialists and their followers in the 20th–21st centuries.

Words in the Middle Ages/Les Mots au Moyen Âge ed. by Victoria Turner and Vincent Debiais

Reviewed by: Words in the Middle Ages/Les Mots au Moyen Âge ed. by Victoria Turner and Vincent Debiais Véronique Duché Turner, Victoria, and Vincent Debiais, eds, Words in the Middle Ages/Les Mots au Moyen Âge (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 46), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; hardback; pp. vi, 340; 100 b/w illustrations, 6 b/w tables; R.R.P. €85.00; ISBN 9782503587950. This bilingual collection of fourteen essays—eleven in English and three in French—offers an intriguing book cover: it shows a panel of the famous eleventh-century Tapestry of Creation, housed in the Museum of the Cathedral of Girona (Spain). Its central scene is delimited by two concentric circles, with Christ Pantocrator in the middle. Two of the three scenes illustrated in the bottom half of the larger circle are represented on the cover: the creation of the birds (‘volatilia celi’—‘birds of the air’) and of the aquatic beings (‘mare’—‘sea’); and Adam, naming the animals around him, with the index of his right hand pointed to them. The inscription reads: ‘Adam non inveniebatur similem sibi’ (‘Adam did not find any creature of his own kind’). These striking scenes, with beautiful colours and fantastic animals (including a unicorn), offer a graphic illustration of the power of the word in the Middle Ages. Indeed, the status of words in the Middle Ages is at the core of this volume, which constitutes the proceedings of the 2016 symposium of the International Medieval Society (IMS) held in Paris in conjunction with the Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris (LAMOP). Philologists, historians, epigraphers, palaeographers, and art historians interrogate the concept of ‘word’ by scrutinizing all sorts of support—texts, images, objects, and buildings. According to its editors, Victoria Turner and Vincent Debiais, this volume ‘traces the status of the word from ontology to usage, encompassing its visual, acoustic, linguistic, and extralinguistic forms’ (back cover). The volume is organized ‘using the zoom-out principle, from the letter to the context of the writing, from the detail contained in the pen stroke to the material and monumental environment of the text’ (p. 3). Firstly, Adrian Papahagi (‘Words with Masks: A Note on the Nomenclature of Some Late Medieval Initials’, pp. 5–20) clarifies the codicological vocabulary, while Dominique Stutzmann (‘Words as Graphic and Linguistic Structures: Word Spacing in Psalm 101 Domine exaudi orationem meam (Eleventh–Fifteenth Centuries)’, pp. 21–59) explores a corpus of forty-eight manuscripts to address ‘the definition, perception and measures of blank spaces between words’ (p. 23), with the open source Oriflamms. exe proving a very useful tool. Focusing on page space, Anne Rauner scrutinizes parish obituaries and their ‘visual rhetoric’ (‘Managing a Living Book: The Planning and the Use of Page Surface in Parish Obituaries in the Late Medieval Diocese of Strasbourg’, pp. 61–88), while Arthur Westwell (‘Correction of Liturgical Words, and Words of Liturgical Correctio in the Ordines Romani of Saint Amand’, pp. 89–107) examines the words of the liturgy and their lexical and morphological characteristics. [End Page 273] Jennifer M. Feltmann (‘Aligning Word and Deed: The Emergence of Confessor as a Priest who Hears Confession’, pp. 109–30) scrutinizes texts as well as sculptures and images to trace the semantic instability of the word ‘confessor’. Focusing on the French Grail romance, Lucas Wood (‘The Origin of the Text and the Authority of the Word in Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie’, pp. 131–44) discusses the topos of the ancient, authoritative source. Morgan Boharski (‘Kisses on Stitches: Words of Active Fetishisation of Cloth Bodies in Old French Romance’, pp. 145–59) turns her attention to two French romances and the erotic dimension of ‘cloth bodies’—a chemise and a manche—offered to the protagonists. Liam Lewis (‘Quacktrap: Glosses and Multilingual Animal Contact in the Tretiz of Walter of Bibbesworth’, pp. 161–79) studies a bilingual list of animal noises and argues that it offers ‘a contact zone between human, animals, and birds’ (p. 163). Focusing on a set of Gallic epitaphs devoid of royal computation, Morgane Uberti (‘Un règne sans roi: Le Non-dit du temps dans quelques inscriptions de la Gaule du haut Moyen Âge...

Germena DE stal and french romanticism

In this article is discussed Germain de Stael and French Romanticism.If we pay attention to French romantic literature, Germain de Staal was one of the first to enter the literature of the romantic period with her populist views and used the term "romanticism". In his work, he compares romantic and classical types. At the same time, the inevitability of the collapse of feudalism, which dominated Europe by the end of the 18th century, is described in detail.

"A kysse onely": The Problem of Female Socialization in William Caxton's Blanchardyn and Eglantine

"A kysse onely":The Problem of Female Socialization in William Caxton's Blanchardyn and Eglantine Jennifer Alberghini In 2018, Babe magazine's article "I Went on a Date with Aziz Ansari. It Turned into the Worst Night of My Life" told the story of a woman known only as "Grace" and her experience with the actor/comedian/self-proclaimed feminist. After rushing through dinner, Ansari brought Grace back to his home and made sexual advances. She resisted, both through body language and speech. The actor initially complied with her request, but he soon resumed his attempts until Grace went home. The experience highly unsettled her, though at first she did not understand why. It took discussions with other women for Grace to understand her feelings of violation fully. When she did, she communicated them to the actor; however, he felt that he had done nothing wrong. Later, he wore a #TimesUp pin at the 2018 Golden Globes to show support for the #MeToo movement. Horrified to see him on TV claiming to be a champion of women, knowing what had happened between them, Grace decided to go public with her story.1 The article provoked outrage: against Grace rather than Ansari. One critic called it "3,000 words of revenge porn."2 A New York Times opinion piece lamented society's failure to educate women how to exit difficult situations, pressing "for women to be more verbal" despite acknowledging that "women are socialized to be docile and accommodating and to put [End Page 347] men's desires before their own."3 The paradox is clear: if society teaches women to say "Yes," how can they be "more verbal" in saying "No?" Exploring the negative responses to the story by female writers, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan and Naomi Snider show how cultural standards make women, in Snider's words, "perpetuat[e] the very systems of oppression that cause the harm."4 Looking to the medieval past, we can see that this phenomenon is part of a long-standing pattern. In particular, medieval literary texts, such as William Caxton's 1489 English translation of the French romance Blanchardyn and Eglantine, were used as a vehicle for women to teach other women submission to men's desires.5 In this essay I will consider this version of the romance, for which the critical focus has thus far been limited to its patronage by Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother. Scholars have suggested that she originally purchased the French book for the king's 1486 marriage to Elizabeth of York; however, they are limited in the reasons for why this particular romance.6 After a brief overview of what we know of the book's historical circumstances from its paratexts, in which Caxton emphasizes that the romance has a pedagogical function, I will examine the text's plot with a focus on two key scenes of sexual violence. The first, the hero Blanchardyn's forcible kissing of the heroine Eglantine, is most notable for a conversation between her and her nurse in its aftermath. I suggest that the latter character, who serves as a kind of counselor figure, may have resonated with Beaufort based on her own experiences. The second scene is the kidnapping of Beatrice, daughter of the romance's non-Christian villain Alymodes.7 Looking at both of these incidents perpetrated by the Christian nobleman Blanchardyn [End Page 348] compared to the modern act of sexual misconduct by Aziz Ansari and the backlash Grace received for publicizing it, I argue that the text's lessons about consent depend on the social position of the man who commits the act of aggression. Like the popular responses to Grace's account, the romance shows how women encourage other women to downplay a bodily violation by an important man and not only to forgive but to love him for it. Before exploring the examples of female-centered pedagogy within both the plot of the story and the better-known context of the book's patronage, some background on both the plot and the patron will be useful. The patroness, Margaret Beaufort, descended from John of Gaunt and his mistress-turned-third-wife, Katherine Swynford. This...

Medieval Narratives of Alexander the Great: Transnational Texts in England and France

Medieval Narratives of Alexander the Great: Transnational Texts in England and France

“ek hræðumz ekki þik” – The dvergar in translated riddarasǫgur

Abstract This article investigates the usage of Old Nordic supernatural concepts in the Old Norse translations of Old French and Anglo-Norman chivalric romances and courtly lais from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. This paper focuses on the usage of the term dvergr as a translation for the Old French nain, reflecting not only the narrative purposes involved in the choice of this word as a translation, but also the possible consequences it could have had on Icelandic folk belief when these works were read out loud alongside other works that formed part of Icelandic literature and Icelandic oral tradition.

Эстетика раннего французского романтизма и ее литературные ипостаси. Жермена де Сталь

The article reconstructs the early romantic philosophical aesthetics of Madame de Stael, which was embodied in her literary work. She made a significant contribution to the creation of the theory of romanticism, compared the romantic and classical types of creativity. De Stael was one of the first French romantics to use the term “romanticism”, define it and analyze from a philosophical and aesthetic point of view a number of key concepts for this new direction of artistic life: love, passion, enthusiasm, spirituality, sensitivity, reflection, self-reflection, melancholy, self-sacrifice, loneliness, alienation, imagination, inspiration, imagery, aesthetic pleasure, taste, talent, genius, ideal. She conceptualized the trend that would become prevalent in mature romanticism — a combination of the incongruous, sharp contrasts and tragic collisions of opposite principles — the sublime and the low, the beautiful and the ugly. De Stael attached particular importance to the national characteristics of artistic creativity, its rootedness in popular culture, and the influence of social institutions on art. She made a significant contribution to the development of aesthetic aspects of literary theory, put forward an innovative thesis about the “metaphysical” language that distinguishes the romantic style. The aesthetic vector of de Stael is directed to the future associated with the development of romantic art. All these ideas were reflected in her literary works.

Ficciones del origen y orígenes de la ficción en la obra de Juan José Nieto

This essay approaches the ways in which Afro-Colombian intellectual, president and novelist, Juan José Nieto (1805–1866), represents Colombia as a new republic where education and personal merit, in contrast to lineage, are the sole purveyors of legitimacy to govern and write. In literary self-representations, Nieto erased his origins as a person of diverse racial origins and instead decided to represent himself as a “new republican notability” who made it to power through hard work. The present essay argues that Nieto, as the first writer of historical novels in Colombia, in his novel Ingermina o la hija de Calamar (1844), plots a new origin for the Republic – one akin to himself, mixed race, based on education and with popular support. As a new letrado in the midst of Romantic euphoria in the continent, Nieto would participate in debates about the origins of national literature for the new nations. As an outsider attacked because of his nonwhite origins, Nieto would contradictorily erase his own history and use the figure of French Romantic Alexandre Dumas, a novelist with Afro-Caribbean origins like himself, to legitimize his own public persona as a self-taught man and defender of republicanism. The essay concludes by suggesting that despite Nieto’s strategies to found a Republic that would erase racial origins as providing legitimacy to occupy positions of power, he was erased from literary and political Colombian history for over 150 years precisely because his antagonists could not accept a nation, and a national literature, without origins in Europe.

Chromolithographed history: brands’ trade cards and the co-construction of the French “roman national” (1900s-1930s)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study how several brands like Poulain, Liebig and Guérin have helped to disseminate the French roman national through their chromolithographs at the beginning of the 20th century. By doing so, the paper highlights the participation of brands in the co-construction of the French roman national, a historical narrative that articulates state-supported collective memories.Design/methodology/approachA total of 1,106 historical trade cards have been collected and analyzed. Historical studies of the roman national have been used as secondary sources to aid in the interpretation of the motifs conveyed in those chromolithographs.FindingsChromolithographic images produced by various brands at the beginning of the 20th century contributed to the roman national. They provide an ethnocentric, patriotic and linear view of history but are also crossed by political fault lines, opposing secular and Catholic visions of history.Originality/valueThe chromolithographs produced and disseminated by companies have so far only been analyzed as promotional tools, aimed at popularizing brands and stores. By studying roman national motifs, this paper helps us understand what role businesses have played in building other narratives and forging a national spirit.