From the perspective of cultural historians, the Age of Napoleon was also the Age of Mme. Germaine de Staël.⁠[1] In widely-read novels, she introduced her generation to heroines—Delphine, Corinne—who embodied not only the ascending spirit of Romanticism but a forceful argument for woman’s entitlement to intellectual vitality. Her most ambitious work, On Germany, anticipated Tocqueville’s […]

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