Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cuillé, Tili Boon

Titel

Songs of Sorrow: Bardic Women in Girodet, Ossian, and Staël

Ist Teil von

• Eighteenth-century studies, 2019-12, Vol.52 (2), p.159-165

Ort / Verlag

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Likening southerners to aristocrats and northerners to French Revolutionaries, she identifies the melancholy poetry of the north as best suited to philosophy and freedom of spirit.9 In the chapter devoted to women of letters, however, Staël notes that while the goal of a republic should be to promote enlightenment: "depuis la Révolution, les hommes ont pensé qu'il était politiquement et moralement utile de réduire les femmes à la plus absurde médiocrité" [since the Revolution, men have thought it politically and morally useful to reduce women to the most absurd mediocrity]. In his General History of England (1747–55), Jacobite historian Thomas Carte differentiated between the "ancient Caledonians, ancestors of modern-day Highlanders" and the "ancestral peoples of Britain," for the Caledonians showed women respect on the battlefield and as judges in legal matters, public forums, and councils of war. The craggy terrain surrounding Mount Vesuvius bears a greater resemblance to barren northern landscapes than to lush southern climes and the melancholy tone of Corinne's improvisation appeals to the English rather than the Italians in her audience. By taking a second look at Girodet's painting, Ossian's poems, and Staël's prose, moving between image, text, and historical context as Mary Sheriff modeled and encouraged, we can posit another source of inspiration for Corinne between the iconography of the blind bard and the inspired sibyl that Mary explored.18 Bardic women, like improvisatrices, incarnate the role Staël envisioned for women in society, for as she declared in De l'éducation de l'âme par la vie: "Je me représente les femmes chantant en beaux vers sur la lyre les exploits des guerriers, interprètes de l'avenir, prêtresses de la gloire, et recevant plus immédiatement l'inspiration du ciel parce qu'elles ne sont point chargées des intérêts positifs de ce monde" [I imagine women singing of warriors' exploits in beautiful verses on the lyre, interpreters of the future, priestesses of glory, receiving heaven's inspiration more directly for they are not burdened with this world's practical concerns].19 Tili Boon Cuillé Tili Boon Cuillé is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis.