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Mme. de Staël's De L'Allemagne: a Misleading lntermediary *
Author(s) -
Furst Lilian R.
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1976.tb00514.x
Subject(s) - romanticism , ignorance , german , politics , personality , german literature , period (music) , literature , philosophy , humanities , history , art , psychoanalysis , psychology , political science , law , linguistics , aesthetics , epistemology
Mme. de Staël's De L'Allemagne , long recognized as a major intermediary between France and Germany, provided much real illumination, but was also in some respects misleading, notably in Mme. de Staël's presentation of the Storm & Stress as German Romanticism. Her treatment of German prose fiction clearly reveals her preference for the Storm & Stress and her disregard of the Romantics. This bias is due not to her ignorance but to a complex of outer and inner factors such as the political intent of De L'Allemagne , Mme. de Staël's working methods, her language problems and her own personality and prejudices. As her view of Germany and German literature was accepted for much of the nineteenth century, her substitution of the Storm & Stress for Romanticism had far‐reaching consequences: it led to a longlasting neglect of the Frühromantiker who were not appreciated in France until the Symbolist period.