Germaine de Staël's Autobiographical Travel Accounts Cabak Rédei, Anna

301 Pages·2017·5.28 MB·English

An Inquiry into Cultural Semiotics: Germaine de Staël's Autobiographical Travel
Accounts
Cabak Rédei, Anna
2007
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Cabak Rédei, A. (2007). An Inquiry into Cultural Semiotics: Germaine de Staël's Autobiographical Travel
Accounts. [Doctoral Thesis (monograph), Cognitive Semiotics]. Lund University Div. of Semiotics Department of
Art History and Musicology Box 117 SE-221 00 LUND.
Total number of authors:
1
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LUND UNIVERSITY
PO Box 117
221 00 Lund
[phone]
AN INQUIRY INTO CULTURAL SEMIOTICS:
GERMAINE DE STAËL’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
TRAVEL ACCOUNTS
Europe 1812. Map published with permission from The American Social History
Project.
Invasion of Russia, 1812. Map published with permission from The American
Social History Project.
Anna Cabak Rédei
An Inquiry into Cultural Semiotics
Germaine de Staël’s Autobiographical
Travel Accounts
Lund University
Division of Semiotics
at the Department of Art History and Musicology
Lund 2007
Rédei, Anna Cabak
An Inquiry into Cultural Semiotics: Germaine de Staël’s
Autobiographical Travel Accounts.
Lund University
Division of Semiotics
2007
ISBN: 978–91–628–7109–3
© Anna Cabak Rédei, 2007.
Graphic design: Anna Cabak Rédei
Graphic production: KFS ab, Lund
Printed with financial support from Crafoordska stiftelsen, Lund.
Over hill, over dale, / Thorough bush, thorough brier, / Over
park, over pale, / Thorough flood, thorough fire, / I do
wander everywhere, / Swifter than the moonè’s sphere; /
(Shakespeare, Fairy Land.)
L’absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les
grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies, et allume le feu. (La
Rochefoucauld, Max. 276.)

For my children

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements.............................................................................i
1. Introduction............................................................................1
2. Mme de Staël as a woman and writer.....................................10
A brief examination of Madame de Staël’s work.....................11
Madame de Staël, gender, and the public sphere....................13
Corinne: the female artist........................................................21
Napoleon and Germaine: a story of exile................................28
3. Cultural semiotics in perspective.............................................39
The study of text within semiotics...........................................39
The Prague school and the focus on the receiver.....................43
The Tartu school theses..........................................................51
The canonical model and its revision......................................53
Cultural semiotics and the study of history..............................59
Alter and Alius........................................................................62
Ego and Alter in we- and they-relations..................................65
Text and Culture....................................................................68
Agent and act: or author and text...........................................72
4. Dix années d’exil: Mme de Staël and Europe..............................76
Dix années d’exil: the journeys to Germany and Russia..........81
The writing of the first journey to Germany: general outlines..84
Weimar (14 December 1803 to 1 March 1804).......................85
Mme de Staël, Goethe and Schiller.........................................87
Berlin (8 March to 19 April 1804).........................................102
The encounter with Rahel Levin..........................................105
Mme de Staël and German Romanticism: conclusion...........119
The second journey to Germany: Vienna 1807–8.................127
The grand tour 1812: travelling to Russia (via Habsburg).....152
Poland, Mme de Staël and French politics............................164
Journey through Galicia........................................................173
Visits to Princess Lubomirska................................................178
Travel through Russia or De la Russie..................................180
Mme de Staël’s correspondence with Alexander I: the glowing
liberal meets the hesitant one................................................186
‘Allons en Russie’..................................................................196
Kiev......................................................................................198