Authoring the Nation: Madame de Staël and the Literary Origins of the State, Dr Adam Rowe and Dr Ruth Houghton

Abstract

While Germain de Staël is remembered as a novelist and playwright (and particularly persistent thorn in the side of the French emperor, Napoléon Bonaparte), she is not usually associated with ideas of law and constitutionalism. Building on de Stael’s unpublished manuscripts penned during the crises of the French Revolution, this research project aims to change that conception. Reflecting on the seemingly endless cycles of purges and coups afflicting the fledging Republic, de Staël crafted an innovative theory of the State and constituent power, in which the nation and its literature were co-constitutive. To ‘end the Revolution’ would not be as simple as developing increasingly ridged and un-democratic constitutional structures, as Sieyes – the ‘oracle’ of the revolution - imagined. Instead, as de Stael argued, formal constitutional structures would have to be in step with the sociological – a space shaped and guided by authors and literature.