La Raison exaltée: études sur 'De la littérature' de Madame de Staël (review)

De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800) is remembered as one of the cornerstones of literary history, exploring the complex relationship between literary expression and its social and historical context. In common with many of her contemporaries, Germaine de Staël believed in human perfectibility. The development of literature was intimately linked to the overall development of humanity, and great writers would interact with their society, combining reason and emotion in words that would be transformed into action. This is the 'raison exaltée' of the title of this collection of essays. Although the eight chapters exploring this theme are grouped into three sections (focused on the relationship between literature and politics, on literature and women, and on literature and creativity), it is this concept that lends an overall cohesiveness to the volume and thereby raises its value beyond the sum of its individual contributions. It is also this concept that helps to expose, explore, and nuance the central tension between Staël's often seemingly low-key and conservative utterances on female nature and place in society, and the crucial role she nevertheless accords to women in the process of human perfectibility. Reduced to its simplest expression, this is shown to be a civilizing influence, gradually enhancing the awareness of the significance of the emotions and the imagination to human existence and to the exercise of true reason. Her historicist conception of female influence on the interrelated fields of literature and politics, combined with an emphasis on originality and creativity as key criteria in the evaluation of aesthetic merit, allowed Staël to celebrate the great literatures of the past as expressions of their particular societies, but also to reveal their shortcomings and to emphasize and valorize the differing contributions of subsequent literatures and societies. Staël's optimistic account of human progress met its great crisis in the Revolution. Here too Staël's historicism is shown to be a useful analytical tool, allowing her to account for the contrast between the impassioned rhetoric of the new Republic and the stoicism of its Ancient counterparts, even as Necker's daughter decries the excesses of the Terror and seems to lose some of her faith in the ability of women to exercise a moderating influence through their words, especially their written words. The contributors to the volume offer subtle readings of the text itself, supplemented by frequent references to the various cultural and intellectual traditions on which Staël drew, as well as to her personal experiences as a female intellectual in a period of revolutionary change. Together, they offer an insightful account of a crucial contribution to our understanding of literature in its relation to society, showing both how it emerges from a tradition and how it anticipates subsequent developments. The collection closes with a valuable bibliography of works on De la littérature.