GERMAINE DE STAËL: FURTHER READING

Biographies

Andrews, Wayne. Germaine: A Portrait of Madame de Staël. New York: Atheneum, 1963, 237 p.

Conveys a modern view of the life of de Staël.

Besser, Gretchen Rous. Germaine de Staël Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994, 180 p.

Offers an analysis of the life, works, and contributions of de Staël in light of new data and a changing feminist perspective.

Blennerhassett, Lady Charlotte. Madame de Staël: Her Friends and Her Influence in Politics and Literature, 3 vols., translated by J. E. Cumming. London: Chapman and Hall, 1889.

Provides a definitive biography of de Staël.

Criticism

Birkett, Jennifer. "Speech in Action: Language, Society, and Subject in Germaine de Staël's Corinne." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 7, no. 4 (July 1995): 393-408.

Discusses the dynamics of subjective and collective narrative voice within the feminist text of Corinne.

Borowitz, Helen O. "The Unconfessed Précieuse: Madame de Staël's Debt to Mademoiselle Scudéry." Nineteenth-Century French Studies 11, nos. 1&2 (fall-winter 1982-83): 32-59.

Explores de Staël's use of de Scudery's literary self-portrait as a model for her fictional heroine Corinne.

Coleman, Patrick. "Exile and Narrative Voice in Corinne." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 24 (1995): 91-105.

Contends that the influential narrative voice of Corinne is traceable to de Staël's own experience with exile and other political expressions.

DeJean, Joan. "Staël's Corinne: The Novel's Other Dilemma." Stanford French Review (spring 1987): 77-88.

Examines de Staël's adoption of the patriarchal third-person perspective and rejection of the first person, conversational form in Corinne.

Deneys-Tunney, Anne. "Corinne by Madame de Staël: The Utopia of Feminine Voice as Music within the Novel." Dalhousie French Studies 28 (fall 1994): 55-63.

Discusses the crisis of the feminine voice portrayed in Corinne.

Goldsmith, Margaret. Madame De Staël: Portrait of a Liberal in the Revolutionary Age. London: Longmans, Green, 1938, 276 p.

Analyzes de Staël's political concepts.

Gutwirth, Madelyn. Madame De Staël, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist As Woman. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1978, 324 p.

Detailed critical study of de Staël, beginning with a presentation of woman's place in the eighteenth century and which includes in-depth biographical information and analyses of the author's best-known novels.

——. "Forging a Vocation: Germaine de Staël on Fiction, Power, and Passion." Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 86, no. 3 (1983-1985): 242-54.

Analyzes de Staël's views on love, passion, and ambition as expressed in De l'influence des passions.

Heller, Deborah. "Tragedy, Sisterhood, and Revenge in Corinne." Papers on Language & Literature 26, no. 2 (spring 1990): 212-32.

Evaluates the impact of de Staël's feminist narrative in Corinne on twentieth-century readers.

Hogsett, Charlotte. "History and Story." In The Literary Existence of Germaine de Staël, pp. 71-93. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Examines de Staël's attempts to insert feminine ways of narration into a masculine-oriented history and literature in A Treatise on Ancient and Modern Literature and Delphine.

Isbell, John. "The Painful Birth of the Romantic Heroine: Staël as Political Animal, 1786-1818." Romanic Review 87, no. 1 (January 1996): 59-66.

Argues that de Staël chose to produce literary art in response to her exclusion from politics as a woman.

Massardier-Kenney, Francoise. "Staël, Translation, and Race." In Translating Slavery: Gender and Race in French Women's Writing, edited by Doris Y. Kadish and Francoise Massardier-Kenney, pp. 135-45. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994.

Investigates de Staël's critique of cultural values in her work, particularly the antislavery sentiment of Mirza.

Moi, Toril. "A Woman's Desire to Be Known: Expressivity and Silence in Corinne." Bucknell Review 45, no. 2 (2002): 143-75.

Explores the obsessive concern with Corinne's expressivity and the protagonist's silence in book 17 of the novel, noting the author's concern with the aesthetics of theatricality and absorption.

Peel, Ellen. "Contradictions of Form and Feminism in Corinne ou L'Italie." Essays in Literature 14, no. 2 (fall 1987): 281-98.

Analyzes patterns and oppositions in the feminism of Corinne.

Schor, Naomi. "Corinne: The Third Woman." L'Esprit Createur 34, no. 3 (fall 1994): 99-106.

Examines the relationship between death and femininity in Corinne.

Swallow, Noreen J. "Portraits: A Feminist Appraisal of Mme de Staël's Delphine." Atlantis 7, no. 1 (fall 1981): 65-76.

Assesses Delphine as it depicts the oppressive effects of patriarchal hegemony.

Vallois, Marie-Claire. "Voice as Fossil, Madame de Staël's Corinne or Italy: An Archaeology of Feminist Discourse." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 6, no. 1 (spring 1987): 47-60.

Interprets de Staël's use of passive and impersonal modes of narration in Corinne.

Winegarten, Renee. "An Early Dissident: Madame de Staël." The New Criterion 16, no. 9 (May 1998): 17-22.

Probes the results of de Staël's exile from France during the Napoleonic regime.

OTHER SOURCES FROM GALE:

Additional coverage of Staël's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 119, 192; Feminist Writers; Guide to French Literature 1789 to the Present; Literature Resource Center; Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Vols. 3, 91; and Twayne's World Authors.