Triumph in Exile by Victoria D. Schmidt (review)

terials" and "Approaches." Although the former section is useful primarily for scholarly purposes, it is particularly helpful for non-Shakespearean scholars, who face the daunting mountain ofstudies. Editor Maurice Hunt offers guidance for the selection ofcomplete Shakespearean editions as well as single editions ofRomeo andJuliet. Equally valuable is his overview of critical, background, textual, and performance studies, along with an assessment of the visual and artistic media available to instructors of all levels. Romeo andJuliet is a valuable addition to the already valuable MLA Approaches to Teaching series, which provides powerful pedagogical tools to educate and inform students as well as professors, and which spark creative and innovative ideas for making the classroom as rich and satisfying a learning environment as possible . * Victoria D. Schmidt. Triumph in Exile. New York: Chaucer Press, 2002. 409p. Aleksandra Gruzinska Arizona State University The opening sentence of Triumph in Exile portrays Napoleon as a megalomaniac. The word erases Napoleon's enduring reform of French education and law, the contributions to science and culture made by the men who accompanied him on his military expeditions, and his unbelievable ascension from a modest student of the military art to Emperor ofthe French, and, why not, the visionary ofa united Europe. This should make the reader apprehensive about all diat is still to come. And yet, having read the epilogue, one reluctantly closes the book. It is entertaining and instructive, provides historical and political information, and gives a lively and fascinating picture of the years that precede and follow the French Revolution of 1789. We acquire an aperçu ofthe First Republic, the Directory, the Napoleonic odyssey, the progress of the Great Army across Europe into Russia and its eventual demise, the burning ofMoscow, Napoleon's victory at Borodino, his defeat at Waterloo, Mme de Staël's return to Paris from exile, and her death in 1817. She missed by three years the glorious explosion of French Romanticism that she had prepared and greatly influenced, and that French poet Alphonse de Lamartine ushered in with his Méditations of 1820. Triumph in Exile depicts the magnetic attraction/repulsion between Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël, and Napoleon. Schmidt is not first in suggesting that Napoleon feared Mme de Staël. He first exiled her from Paris, then from France, and finally confined her life to her family estate at Coppet, in Swit90 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * SPRING 2003 Reviews zerland. He pursued and harassed her during her epic escape while Mme de Staël proclaimed her love offreedom and her suspicions about Napoleon. The novel has a Prelude (1-6), five parts, and an Epilogue (407-409). Part One shows Germaine's parents, her education, her first love affairs, and the rise of Napoleon to power (7-143). Part Two begins on the 1 8 Brumaire and ends with Napoleon's triumph in theTribunate where he imposes his legislation that restricts debate. Constant's passionate speech denouncing the law had, no doubt, some input from Mme de Staël. It temporarily put an end to his political career (143177 ). In Part Three Napoleon's and de Staël's skirmishes eventually lead to her exile from Paris (178-279). Part Four ends as Madame de Staël leaves for Austria while Napoleon extends his grip over Europe (280-348). Part Five tells Mme de Staël's epic travels in a golden berline, pulled by horses, through Eastern Europe and Russia, her crossing in a fishing boat to Sweden, her stop in London, and finally her return to Paris after Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig in 1814 (349-405). In the last chapter, her friends pay her a tribute worthy of a queen at Talleyrand's home, he who, like the reed in La Fontaine's fable, bent and weathered well the storms that lead to the Restoration. The Epilogue tells of her death on July 14, 1817, and the ascension ofAlbertine, now married into the de Broglie family. This is not a historical work or a biography. These fields ofstudy require annotations and scholarly footnotes, research and proof ofdocumentation. Schmidt, no doubt, did her research thoroughly, yet she chose not to overload her book...