BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

oddly self-compromised, Germans. These ideas found a reflection in the writings of French
authoress Madame de Staël, who implanted, or at least encouraged, in English minds the notion
that modern German culture betrayed intrinsic national and racial characteristics peculiar to
Germany. German romanticism and philosophical idealism could be seen as a divergence from
mainstream European culture, classicism, French realism and British empiricism—a divergence
which intimated the transmogrification of ancient inherent differences stemming from Germany’s
barbarian, non-Roman past. De Staël also stamped the German predilection for romanticism,
mysticism and chivalry as an indigenous quality wholly separate from classical Greek or Roman
influence. 15 Although de Staël’s popular work, translated and published in 1813 as Germany,
furnished a much-needed antidote for the triple dose of bad translations, scathing ridicule and
venomous criticism that had poisoned early appreciation of German literature in Britain, readers
imbibed much more than a mere treatise on literature in her sweeping commentary on German
politics, history, geography, religion and social life. De Staël restored and updated the moral
barbarian stereotype in many respects, substituting for the demarcation between primitive tribal
societies and the superior culture, technical proficiency and civic organization of imperial Rome
the contrast between socio-economically backward, politically medieval Germany and post-
Enlightenment, culturally sophisticated, post-revolutionary, but also repressive France under
15 She based this conclusion partly on the literary device of allusion to providence rather
than fate. See de Staël, Germany 1:198, 200, 204. Because the manuscript of De l’Allemagne
had been indicted by Napoleon in 1810 for being too sympathetic to Germany, and thus anti-
French, a smuggled copy first saw publication in England in 1813, both in translation and in the
original French. On the early condemnation of German literature by English anti-Jacobin critics,
to be discussed in more detail below, and de Staël’s reconstructive influence, see B. Q. Morgan
and A. R. Hohlfeld, German Literature in British Magazines 1750-1860 (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1949), 52.
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