果冻传媒

Katherine Astbury, Associate Professor and Reader in French Studies at the 果冻传媒 has appeared on BBC Radio 4's to discuss the life and impact of Germaine de Sta毛l (1766-1817) who Byron praised as Europe's greatest living writer, and was at the heart of intellectual and literary life in the France of revolution and of Napoleon.

Writing about de Sta毛l, Dr Astbury said:

"Madame de Sta毛l was one of the intellectual heavyweights of the early 19^th century. A liberal writer and thinker who actively engaged in politics during the early years of the Revolution, she developed a new aesthetic path for the French novel through two essays, on fiction and on literature, and two major novels, Delphine and Corinne.

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"She saw herself as a defender of liberty in opposition to Napoleon Bonaparte and their tussle over freedom of expression defined her career. Forced into exile by Napoleon, de Sta毛l travelled widely to show that she wouldn鈥檛 be silenced and presented Britain, Germany and Italy as offering alternative artistic models to Napoleonic France. She thereby embodied both freedom of expression and the writer鈥檚 need to be engaged with society, refusing to allow inspiration to be constrained in any way by politics".

As well as attracting and inspiring others in her salon, she wrote novels, plays. literary criticism, political essays, and poems and developed the ideas behind Romanticism. She achieved this while regularly exiled from the Paris in which she was born, having fallen out with Napoleon who she opposed, becoming a towering figure in the history of European ideas.

16 November 2017

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