The birth of European romanticism

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It was through Staël's bestseller, De l'Allemagne, that the term "Romanticism," coined in Germany, reached Europe and America. Around this term, Staël built a new and universal agenda: her manifesto offered Napoleon's Europe an alternative to everything he stood for. In this ground-breaking work, John Claiborne Isbell reasserts Staël's place in history and analyzes her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion and society from 1789 to 1815. This investigation sheds new light on the two different revolutions that created modern Europe, as seen here by a leader of both.