Description

Corinne; or, Italy (1807) entwines the love of Corinne, a celebrated Italian improvisatrice, and Oswald, a melancholic Scottish lord, with a panoramic tour of Rome, Naples, and Venice. Staël marries narrative pathos to reflective essays on art, music, religion, and national character, staging the sublime and the picturesque amid ritual and ruins. This hybrid of romance, travelogue, and aesthetic theory both anticipates European Romanticism and probes the constraints on female genius, contrasting English reserve with Italian expressiveness. A cosmopolitan exile and daughter of Jacques Necker, Madame de Staël refined a comparative method at Coppet after Napoleon banished her from Paris. Her 1804 Italian travels supplied firsthand detail; her Protestant, Swiss-French background and salon improvisations shape Corinne's art. Displacement, censorship, and a critique of national prejudice color the novel's meditations on freedom and the price of female fame. Recommended to readers of Romanticism, travel writing, and feminist criticism, it offers luminous set pieces, a cosmopolitan ethics, and a rigorous inquiry into national character. Read it to consider how love, country, and talent might coexist without mutilating one another.

Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable—distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Author Biography · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.