Chapter 13 - Romantic Spain and National Resistance

Summary

Chapter 13 reviews Staël’s contributions to her second husband John Rocca’s memoirs of the Peninsular War. When we consider the new Europe of nations that Staël bequeaths us, Romantic Spain seems striking in its absence. Her article “Camoëns” of winter 1811 has more on exiled genius than on Iberia; in Delphine, 1802, Léonce and the family of his Spanish mother are proud and devout to excess; and finally, the description in De la littérature (1800) of Spain’s inability, in contrast to Italy, to fuse the Arab South and the Christian North – a sterility born of priests and despotism – is fundamental for the 1813 debates of Staël, Schlegel, and Sismondi (DL 164–166). But here stands proof that she revised the war memoirs of her husband Rocca to show a popular struggle that checkmated Napoleon’s troops.