Madame de Staï¿1/2l: The Dangerous Exile [Hardcover]

Angelica Goodden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2008 | ISBN-10: 019923809X | ISBN-13: 978-0199238095

How does exile beget writing, and writing exile? What kind of writing can both be fuelled by absence and prolong it? Exile, which was meant to imprison her, paradoxically gave Madame de Sta�l a freedom that enabled her to be as active a dissident as any woman in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was capable of being. Repeatedly banished for her nonconformism, she felt she had been made to suffer twice over, first for political daring and then for daring, as a woman, to be political (a particularly grave offence in the eyes of the misogynist Napoleon). Yet her outspokenness - in novels, comparative literary studies, and works of political and social theory - made her seem as much a threat outside her beloved France as within it, while her friendship with statesmen, soldiers, and literary figures such as Byron, Fanny Burney, Goethe, and Schiller simply added to her dangerous celebrity. She preached the virtues of liberalism and freedom wherever she went, turning the experiences of her enforced absence into an arsenal to use against all who tried to suppress her. Even Napoleon, perhaps her greatest foe, conceded, from his own exile on St Helena that she would last. Her unremitting activity as a speaker and writer made her into precisely the sort of activist no woman at that time was permitted to be; yet she paradoxically remained a reluctant feminist, seeming even to connive at the inferior status society granted her sex at the same time as vociferously challenging it, and remaining torn by the conflicting demands of public and private life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This biography of Stael opens by asking 'How does writing beget exile, and exile writing?', and in response the nine chronologically ordered chapters offer insightful and bold analysis of Stael's life and mentality. Forum for Modern Language Studies a detailed and elaborate reconstruction of the experience of exile in relation to the forging of de Stael's major literary works... Biancamaria Fontana, Times Literary Supplement Goodden gives many illuminating examples, and points clearly to the tension between Stael's desire for personal freedom and her shifting but ultimately conservative views on the position of women in general. Paul Rowe, French Studies

About the Author

Angelica Goodden is Fellow and Tutor at St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she teaches eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. She has a particular interest in women artists and writers and has written several books on the liteature and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, along with biographies of the artists Elisabeth Louise Vig�e Le Brun and Angelica Kauffman.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019923809X
• ISBN-13: 978-0199238095
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,403,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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