On the threshold between Enlightenment and Early Romanticism Madame de Staël had a pivotal role as a literary critic and as a brilliant conversationalist who thrived on lively poetic and political discussions in her intellectual salons in an age of turmoil, the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. Many of her contemporaries confirm that she was a woman of unusual substance, intelligence, and power, among them Goethe who in his
Tag- und Jahreshefte[Annals] (1804) referred to her as “Weltfrau” [woman of the world] and Lord Byron who in “The Bride of Abydos” called her “the first female writer of this, perhaps any age” (1813). Yet it was not only her overwhelming volubility that prompted successive French governments to exile her repeatedly and Napoleon to…
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Citation: Hoffmeister, Gerhart. "Madame de Stael". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 July 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4185, accessed 23 November 2024.]
