Stael’s Philosophy of the Passions: Sensibility, Society and the Sister Arts

This 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.

Tili Boon Cuillé is associate professor of French at Washington University in St. Louis and specializes in eighteenth-century French literature, philosophy, and aesthetics. She is the author of Narrative Interludes: Musical Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century French Texts (Toronto University Press, 2006) as well as of several articles on opera, painting, and the novel. Karyna Szmurlo is professor of French in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities at Clemson University. Her research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers combines history, feminist theory, and the philosophy of language. Among her several collections of essays on Staël is the recently edited volume Germaine de Staël: Forging a Politics of Mediation (2011).