Writing the Self, Writing the Nation : Romantic Selfhood in the Works of Germaine de Stael and Claire de Duras Paperback / softback

by Stacie Allan

Part of the French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries series

Paperback / softback

Only a few left - usually despatched within 24 hours

Description

The French Revolution represents a pivotal moment within the history of personhood in France, where gender and national differences provided the foundations of society.

As such, these constructs feature as ideological battlegrounds in the search for identity and self-expression within the Romantic literature published between the revolutions of 1789 and 1830.

This book considers Germaine de StaÃ«lâ€™s and Claire de Durasâ€™s depictions of menâ€™s and womenâ€™s shared and diverging lived experiences to offer an innovative transnational perspective on the usually male-focused mal du siÃ¨cle.

Its methodology combines feminist revisions of the novel, situated reading practices, and life writing research with an intersectional approach to gender and nationhood.

This framework presents a dialectical relationship between sameness and difference on formal and thematic levels that challenges the construction and enforcement of binaries within early nineteenth-century legislation, discourse, and culture.

Beyond StaÃ«lâ€™s and Durasâ€™s intertextual relationship, this book promotes the importance of an understudied period in literary scholarship, clarifies womenâ€™s role within French Romanticism, and explores the tense relationship between the self and the nation.