Benjamin Constant : A Biography

ISBN-13: 9780415019378 / Angielski / Twarda / 1993 / 352 str.

Dennis Wood;Wood Dennis

Opis

In his own lifetime, Henri Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was known as a political theorist, as the courageous defender of liberal causes, and as a notable historian of the religious experience of mankind. Through his journals, autobiographical works and correspondence - documents largely unknown to his contemporaries - subsequent generations have discovered in Constant a complex personality and have seen in Adolphe one of the greatest French novels of psychological analysis. In recent decades a number of private archives have become accessible to scholars for the first time, and this has brought to light important documents by, and relating to, Constant. Drawing on these sources, many of them unpublished, Dennis Wood's biography offers a fresh assessment of Constant the writer and the man, laying particular stress on his early experiences. Wood relates the development of Constant's political thought, and his passionate interest in the history of religion, to his work as novelist and self-analyst.

Spis treści

1. `The Grief That Does Not Speak': Constant and his Father (1767-1783) 2. `The Charms of Friendship' (1783-1785) 3. Isabelle de Charriere (1785-1787) 4. Escape (1787-1788) 5. The Brunswick Years (1788-1794) 6. Germaine de Stael (1794-1800) 7. `The Intermittence of the Heart' (1800-1806) 8. `Italiam, Italiam' (1806-1812) 9. The End of an Empire (1812-1816) 10. Adolphe (1816-1819) 11. Apotheosis (1819-1830) Epilogue

O autorze

Dennis Wood