Republican Passions Germaine de Staël and Mary Wollstonecraft on the Politics of Emotion and the French Revolution, c.1785-1815

This project examines the place of passions, sentiments and affectations in political life in the aftermath of the French Revolution through the writings of Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1798). As woman writers, witnesses to the Revolution, philosophers of the passions and Protestant thinkers, De Staël and Wollstonecraft offer an especially useful insight into this issue. My comparative, bilingual case-study of their thought hopes to shed light on the ways in which British and French attitudes to political feelings shifted after 1789.