The Birth of European Romanticism

It was through Staël’s best-seller De l’Allemagne that the term Romanticism, coined in Germany, reached Europe and America. Around this term, Staël built a new and universal agenda: her manifesto offered Napoleon’s Europe an alternative to everything he stood for. The new universe she revealed helped to bury the neo-Classical world and to shape the nineteenth century. In this important work, Dr Isbell reasserts Staël’s place in history and analyses her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion, and society from 1789 to 1815. This investigation sheds light upon the two different revolutions that created modern Europe, seen here by a leader of both.

• On the work which invented European Romanticism and shaped the nineteenth century • Staël’s book was regarded as subversive and was pulped by Napoleon’s troops, only to appear to great acclaim in London shortly afterwards • Contains an early vision of ‘the new Europe’

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Author’s note; Introduction; 1. Birth of a nation - Staël’s Romantic Germany in 1810; 2. Romantic literature and politics; 3. Philosophy and ethics in Napoleonic Europe; 4. Religion, love, enthusiasm - a new Enlightenment; Conclusion; Appendix: De l’Allemagne titles and dates; Notes; Bibliography; Index.