Germaine de Stael

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Germaine de Staël

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Germaine de Staël , 1766-1817, French-Swiss woman of letters, whose full name was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, baronne de Staël-Holstein. Born in Paris, the daughter of Jacques and Suzanne Necker, she early absorbed the intellectual and political atmosphere of her mother's salon. In 1786 she married Baron Staël-Holstein, a Swedish diplomat. Though moderately sympathizing with the French Revolution, she left France in 1792. Returning to Paris under the Directory, she made her salon a powerful political and intellectual center. She separated, amicably, from her husband and became intimately associated with Benjamin Constant. Her love life remained, to the end, both complicated and unconventional. In 1803 her spirited opposition to Bonaparte caused her exile from Paris. Mme de Staël retired to her estate at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva, where she attracted a brilliant circle. Already the author of a successful novel, Delphine (1802), and of a study of the influence of social conditions on literature ( De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1800), she was inspired by a trip to Italy to write the novel Corinne (1807). Her principal work, De l'Allemagne (1810), was the result of a tour through Germany. Napoleon, who resented the book as an invidious comparison between German and French culture and mores, ordered the destruction of the entire first edition (1811) on the ground that it was "un-French." Threatened by Napoleon's police, Mme de Staël fled to Russia and England; in 1815 she returned to Coppet. Republished, De l'Allemagne tremendously influenced European thought and letters, which became imbued with Mme de Staël's enthusiasm for German romanticism. Among her other works are Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française (1818) and the autobiographical Dix Années d'exil (1818). There are English translations of most of her works.

Bibliography: See her correspondence (tr. 1970); her memoirs (new ed. 1968); biography by C. Herold (1964); and M. Levaillant, The Passionate Exiles (1958, repr. 1971).

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Richier, Germaine

A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art | 1999 | | © A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art 1999, originally published by Oxford University Press 1999. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Richier, Germaine (1902–1959). French sculptor, born at Grans, near Arles, the daughter of a vineyard owner. She had a traditional training as a carver, studying first at the École des Beaux-Arts, Montpellier, 1922–5, and then privately under Bourdelle in Paris, 1925–9. However, from about 1940 she began to create a distinctive type of bronze sculpture. Her figures became long and thin, combining human with animal or insect (and sometimes vegetal) forms. The surfaces of these powerful and disquieting works have a tattered and lacerated effect, creating a macabre feeling of decomposition, and she was one of the pioneers of an open form of sculpture in which enclosed space becomes as important and alive as the solid material. Such figures were extremely difficult to cast and she showed great technical resourcefulness in bringing them to completion. The public sometimes found her work shocking, especially her Crucified Christ (church of Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce, Assy, 1950), which caused a storm of controversy. Nevertheless, her international prestige grew steadily in the postwar years and in 1951 she won the Sculpture Prize at the São Paulo Bienal. In 1947 she began to make engravings, from 1951 she made a few sculptures with coloured backgrounds painted by Hans Hartung or other artists, and in the last two years of her life she took up painting herself. She died of cancer. Her first husband, whom she married in 1929, was the Swiss sculptor Otto Bänninger (1897–1973) and during the Second World War she lived in Switzerland; her second husband, whom she married in 1955, was the French writer René de Soulier, whose books include L'Art fantastique (1961).

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Free newspaper and magazine articles

Free Article An early dissident: Madame de Stael.(exiled writer in Napoleon's France)
Magazine article from: New Criterion; 5/1/1998
Free Article Madame de Stael.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
Magazine article from: Contemporary Review; 6/1/2005
Free Article The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice.(Review)
Magazine article from: The Historian; 3/22/2001

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The stories of citizens: Rousseau, Montesquieu, and de Stael challenge Enlightenment reason. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, and Germaine de Stael)
Magazine article from: Polity; 3/22/1998; ; 700+ words ; ...Charles-Louis Montesquieu, and Germaine de Stael tell stories that warn against...be that someone hears. --Germaine de Stael, Delphine These words, inscribed...tomb of the title character in Germaine de Stael's 1802 novel, remind the...
An Extraordinary Woman: Selected Writings of Germaine de Stael.
Magazine article from: The Nation; 3/27/1995; ; 700+ words ; ...feelings into actions," Germaine de Stael once commented. That...Selected Writings of Germaine de Stael, translated and edited...for George 111, but Germaine rebelled and wound up at 20 with Eric de Stael, a Swedish baron...
Civilizing the sibyl: Stael's Corinne ou l'Italie.(Germaine de Stael)(Critical essay)
Magazine article from: French Forum; 1/1/2007; ; 700+ words ; ...inconsequents. (Corinne writing to Oswald, Stael Corinne ou l'Italie) Germaine de Stael's Corinne ou l'Italie portrays a utopian...postcolonial theory, (1) to illustrate how Mme de Stael conscientiously blurs the barriers that separate...
Germaine de Stael, daughter of the Enlightenment; the writer and her turbulent era.(Brief article)(Book review)
Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News; 8/1/2008; 533 words ; 9781591025603 Germaine de Stael, daughter of the Enlightenment; the writer and her turbulent...the rise and fall of Napoleon and the return of the Bourbons Germaine Necker de Stael ran one of the most influential salons of her time. She was...
Madame de Stael: The inveterate idealist
Magazine article from: The Hudson Review; 10/1/2001; ; 700+ words ; ...the work of society. -Mme. de StaEl, Corinne In pre-Revolutionary...just not in public. Madame de Stael, the most brilliant woman of her...virtually every other area of her life. Germaine de Stael, passionate, idealistic, generous...
An early dissident: Madame de Stael.(exiled writer in Napoleon's France)
Magazine article from: New Criterion; 5/1/1998; ; 700+ words ; ...On this theme, Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Mme. de Stael (1766-1817), the great forerunner...political scandal. Mme. de Stael's fault in the eyes of the leaders...on May 23, 1812, Mme. de Stael left Coppet, and carrying only...
A tempest in petticoats; French letters.(Madame de Stael)(Book Review)
Magazine article from: The Economist (US); 3/19/2005; 700+ words ; ...JUST reading about the life of Germaine Necker, or Madame de Stael as she later became, is an exhausting...generally closed to women. Madame de Stael was introduced to politics by...quietly away. But Madame de Stael became much more than her father...
Madame de Stael.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
Magazine article from: Contemporary Review; 6/1/2005; 559 words ; Madame de Stael. Maria Fairweather. Constable. [pounds...author says, 'writing a life of Madame de Stael is a little like trying to control a coach...one pulling in a different direction'. Germaine Necker was born of Swiss Protestant lineage...
The power of plain Germaine.(Book Review)
Newspaper article from: The Mail on Sunday (London, England); 3/6/2005; 700+ words ; ...got everyone talking, Mme de Stael's main talent was networking...made appearances. If Mme de Stael - Maria Fairweather admirably...refusing to refer to her as 'Germaine' - had an Achilles heel, it...their physical beauty, Mme de Stael was distinctly plain. Dumpy...
BIOGRAPHY FRANCES WILSON ON A FRACTIOUS BUT FRUITFUL RELATIONSHIP
Newspaper article from: The Sunday Telegraph London; 8/10/2008; ; 700+ words ; Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography...the 'First Woman of Europe', and Germaine de Stael's legion of lovers included (probably...thing as there are lives enough of Germaine de Stael in which she is worshipped like the...

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