Stael’s Philosophy of the Passions

Our volume examines the philosophical, political, and personal convictions that informed Staël’s theory of the passions and the social and aesthetic innovations to which it gave rise. Moving from her affective theory to her literary practice, we explore Staël’s transformative influence on the communities of women artists she fostered. Her cosmopolitanism consisted in transcending traditional distinctions between emotion and cognition, pleasure and pain, genders and genres, languages and cultures, Classicism and Romanticism, melancholy and enthusiasm.