The Novel's Seductions: Staëhl's Corinne in Critical Inquiry - Tapa dura

Were the strength of a literary work measured by its impact on the reader, Corinne, or Italy would qualify as one among the most effective of texts, to judge by the intensity of the responses it has produced. Positing feminine transcendence through art as a counterdiscourse to the militaristic expansionism of Napoleon, the novel was acclaimed as a revolutionary act at the time of its first publication. Despite the hostility of patriarchal criticism that targeted the novel's literary value, Corinne was published in more than forty editions between 1807 and 1872. More recently, it has given rise to a fresh series of interpretations in the context of women's studies. The Novel's Seductions: Stael's Corinne in Critical Inquiry not only documents an extraordinary revival of interest in this work demonstrated by American academia, but provides teachers of literature as well as students with an introduction to the novel's problematics and to bibliographical sources.

Karyna Szmurlo, Professor of French in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities at Clemson University, is coeditor of Germaine de Stael: Crossing the Borders, published in 1991 by Rutgers University Press.