Madame de Staël ou le plaidoyer pour une vie seconde : le théâtre

"Madame de Staël or the Necessity of a Second Life: The Theatre. Our contribution proposes an incursion into literary history at the time of the First Wave of French Romanticism. The subject of the investigation is Madame de Staël’s experimental theatre and the dramatic seasons that she organized between 1804 and 1811 in Coppet and Geneva. Our conclusions are twofold: on the aesthetic side, Coppet’s dramatic representations had the role of changing the aesthetic and literary canons of the early 19th century; on the historical side, the Coppet Group is one of the first romantic cenacles whose resounding literary activity was the theatre. Keywords: Madame de Staël, Coppet, Geneva, experimental theatre, French Romanticism, aesthetic and literary canons, 19th century literature, romantic theatre."

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Romantyczne wędrówki Polaków po Szwajcarii Saskiej

Góry, Literatura, Kultura ◽

10.19195/2084-4107.12.10 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

pp. 149-175

Author(s):

Ewa Grzęda

Keyword(s):

19Th Century ◽

Travel Literature ◽

Early 19Th Century ◽

Polish Literature ◽

History Of ◽

Polish Language ◽

The Aesthetic ◽

Spatial Imagination ◽

Aesthetic Sensibility ◽

The 19Th Century

Romantic wanderings of Poles across Saxon SwitzerlandThe history of Polish tourism in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains as well as the literary and artistic reception of the landscape and culture of Saxon Switzerland have never been discussed in detail. The present article is a research reconnaissance. The beginnings and development of tourism in the region came in the late 18th and early 19th century. The 1800s were marked by the emergence of the first German-language descriptions of Saxon Switzerland, which served as guidebooks at the time. From the very beginning Poles, too, participated in the tourist movement in the area. The author of the article seeks to follow the increasing interest in Saxon Switzerland and the appearance of the first descriptions of the region in Polish literature and culture. She provides a detailed analysis of Polish-language accounts of micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains by Andrzej Edward Koźmian, Stanisław Deszert, Antoni Edward Odyniec, Klementyna Hoffman née Tańska and a poem by Maciej Bogusz Stęczyński. As the analysis demonstrates, in the first half of the 19th century Poles liked to visit these relatively low mountains in Central Europe and tourism in the region is clearly part of the history of Polish mountain tourism. Thanks to unique aesthetic and natural values of the mountains, full of varied rocky formations, reception of their landscape had an impact of the development of the aesthetic sensibility of Polish Romantics. Direct contact with nature and the landscape of Saxon Switzerland also served an important role in the shaping of spatial imagination of Polish tourists, encouraging them to explore other mountains in Europe and the world, including the Alps. On the other hand thanks to the development of tourist infrastructure in Saxon Switzerland, facilitating trips in the region and making the most attractive spots available to inexperienced tourists, micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains marked an important stage in the development of mountain tourism on a popular-recreational level. Polish-language accounts of trips to Saxon Switzerland from the first half of the 20th century are a noteworthy manifestation of the beginnings of Polish travel literature.

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The Opera as a Fragment in the Literary Reception of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (Adam Mickiewicz, Heinrich Heine, Théophile Gautier)

Ruch Literacki ◽

10.1515/ruch-2017-0082 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 57 (5) ◽

pp. 527-546

Author(s):

Aleksandra Wojda

Keyword(s):

19Th Century ◽

Heinrich Heine ◽

Theophile Gautier ◽

Romantic Literature ◽

Large Measure ◽

Early 19Th Century ◽

The Media ◽

Carl Maria Von Weber ◽

The Aesthetic ◽

Adam Mickiewicz

Summary This article examines the influence of early 19th-century operatic culture on Romantic literature by focusing on the cultural, literary and transmedial (cross-genre) reception of one of the most popular works of the early Romantic opera, Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber. More specifically, the analysis deals with that aspect of its influence which can be described as fragmentary reception. The article argues that examples of such fragmentary reception can be found in the works of Adam Mickiewicz, Heinrich Heine and Théophile Gautier. However, the central argument of this study is that the emergence of this type of trans-media links was, in a large measure, determined by a peculiar, fragmentary reception of operas. That model of reception had been popularized by a variety of trend-setting, opinion-making agents and institutions (the critics, the press), and enforced by mechanisms of socio-cultural and technological change (resulting in the broadening of the media landscape and the aesthetic sensibility of the general public). The article also claims that this reception model of the opera not only reinforced some structural elements of the operatic work itself but also prompted the writers to explore new ways of structuring their texts (a development encouraged by the upgrade of the fragment by the Romantic aesthetics). Thus early 19th-century socio-cultural and transmedial reception patterns of the opera can be seen as a spur to creativity and literary experimentation – a conclusion which casts doubt on the traditional view that it was a period when aesthetic idealism ruled supreme.

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