Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-21T04:44:24.115Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Children of Liberty”: Idealist Historiography in Staël, Shelley, and Sand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Kari Lokke
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay explores the contributions of a tradition of nineteenth-century Künstlerromane by Germaine de Staël, Mary Shelley, and George Sand to European idealist historiography as exemplified in Kant's writings on perfectibility. Corinne, Valperga, and Consuelo represent the historical agency of the intellectual and artist as communication with a spirit world inhabited by ghosts of the past so that their secrets and wisdom can be transmitted to the future. In canonical Romanticism, contact with these phantasms provokes crippling guilt over the failure of past projects of perfectibility like the French Revolution (doomed by violence and bloodshed), guilt that is figured in the interdependent tropes of the titanic hero and Romantic melancholy. The novels discussed here perform an explicit critique of masculinist individualism in the name of women and humanity as a whole, replacing melancholy with enthusiasm and deploying spirits aesthetically, as sublime signs of future historical potentiality.

Type
Special Topic: Imagining History
Information
PMLA , Volume 118 , Issue 3: Special Topic: Imagining History , May 2003 , pp. 502 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alliston, April. “Of Haunted Highlands: Mapping a Geography of Gender in the Margins of Europe.” Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature. Ed. Maertz, Gregory. New York: State U of New York P, 1998. 55–78.Google Scholar
Balayé, Simone. “A propos du « préromantisme »: Continuité ou rupture chez Mme de Staël.” Le préromantisme: Hypothèque ou hypothèse? Colloque de Clermont-Ferrand, 29–30 Juin 1972. Ed. Viallaneix, Paul. Paris: Klincksieck, 1975. 153–68.Google Scholar
Brown, Marshall. “Romanticism and Enlightenment.” The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism. Ed. Curran, Stuart. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 25–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cellier, Léon. “L'occultisme dans Consuelo et La comtesse de Rudolstadt.” Introduction. Sand, Consuelo et La comtesse xlvii–lxxviii.Google Scholar
Certeau, Michel de. The Writing of History. Trans. Tom Conley. New York: Columbia UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Delon, Michel. “Germaine de Staël and Other Possible Scenarios of Revolution.” Trans. Madelyn Gutwirth and Marcel Gutwirth. Germaine de Staël: Crossing the Borders. Ed. Gutwirth, Madelyn, Goldberger, Avriel, and Szmurlo, Karyna. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991. 22–33.Google Scholar
Vivian, Folkenflik, trans. An Extraordinary Woman: Selected Writings of Germaine de Staël. Introd. Folkenflik. New York: Columbia UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” Collected Papers. Vol. 4. Trans. Joan Riviere. New York: Basic, 1959. 152–70.Google Scholar
Gutwirth, Madelyn. “Corinne and Consuelo as Fantasies of Immanence.” George Sand Studies 8.1–2 (1986–87): 21–27.Google Scholar
Homans, Margaret. Wo men Writers and Poetic Identity: Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, and Emily Dickinson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Kadish, Doris. Politicizing Gender: Narrative Strategies in the Aftermath of the French Revolution. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. The Conflict of the Faculties / Der Streit der Fakultäten. Trans and introd. Mary J. Gregor. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1979.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. Trans. H. B. Nisbet. German Idealist Philosophy. Ed. and introd. Bubner, Rüdiger. London: Penguin, 1997. 55–79.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Immanuel Kants Werke. Ed. Cassirer, Ernst. Vol. 4. Berlin: Cassirer, 1922.Google Scholar
Lévêque, Laure. Corinne, ou l'Italie de Madame de Staël: Poétique et politique. Paris: Editions du Temps, 1999.Google Scholar
Lew, Joseph W. “God's Sister: History and Ideology in Valperga.” The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. Fisch, Audrey A., Mellor, Anne K., and Schor, Esther. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. 159–81.Google Scholar
Lokke, Kari. “Sibylline Leaves: Mary Shelley's Valperga and the Legacy of Corinne.” Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature. Ed. Maertz, Gregory. New York: State U of New York P, 1998. 157–73.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Sign of History.” The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. 151–81.Google Scholar
Rajan, Tilottama. Introduction. Shelley, Valperga 7– 42.Google Scholar
Rajan, Tilottama. “Mary Shelley's Mathilda: Melancholy and the Political Economy of Romanticism.” Studies in the Novel 26.2 (1994): 43–68.Google Scholar
Rieger, James. The Mutiny Within: The Heresies of Percy Bysshe Shelley. New York: Braziller, 1967.Google Scholar
Rigney, Ann. Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rossington, Michael. “Future Uncertain: The Republican Tradition and Its Destiny in Valperga.” Mary Shelley in Her Times. Ed. Bennett, Betty T. and Curran, Stuart. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 103–18.Google Scholar
Sand, George. “A Charles Poncy.” 23 Dec. 1843. Correspondance. Vol. 6. Ed. Georges Lubin. Paris: Garnier, 1969. 324–31.Google Scholar
Sand, George. La comtesse de Rudolstadt. Sand, Consuelo et La comtesse, vol. 3.Google Scholar
Sand, George. Consuelo. Sand, Consuelo et La comtesse, vols. 1–2.Google Scholar
Sand, George. Consuelo: A Romance of Venice. New York: Da Capo, 1979.Google Scholar
Sand, George. Consuelo et La comtesse de Rudolstadt. 3 vols. Ed. and introd. Léon Cellier and Léon Guichard. Paris: Garnier, 1959.Google Scholar
Sand, George. The Countess Rudolstadt. 2 vols. Trans. Frank H. Potter. New York: Dodd, 1891.Google Scholar
Schor, Naomi. George Sand and Idealism. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. and introd. McWhir, Anne. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1996.Google Scholar
Shelley, Mary. “Madame de Staël, 1766–1817.” The Cabinet Cyclopedia: Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France. Vol. 2. London: Longman, 1839. 295–344.Google Scholar
Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. and introd. Rajan, Tilottama. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1998.Google Scholar
Staël, Germaine de. Corinne; or, Italy. Trans. and ed. Avriel Goldberger. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Staël, Germaine de. Corinne, ou L'Italie. New York: Leavitt, 1864.Google Scholar
Staël, Germaine de. De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales. Ed. Tieghem, Paul Van. Geneva: Lib. Droz, 1959.Google Scholar
Staël, Germaine de. De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales suivi De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. Paris: Charpentier, 1842. 1–159.Google Scholar
Underwood, Ted. “Romantic Historicism and the Afterlife.” PMLA 117 (2002): 237–51.Google Scholar
Van Tieghem, Paul. Introduction. Staël, De la littérature vii–lxiv.Google Scholar
Waller, Margaret. The Male Malady: Fictions of Impotence in the French Romantic Novel. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1993.Google Scholar
White, Daniel E. “Mary Shelley's Valperga: Italy and the Revision of Romantic Aesthetics.” Mary Shelley's Fictions. Ed. Eberle-Sinatra, Michael. London: Macmillan, 2000. 75–94.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973.Google Scholar