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The first translation of The Countess von Rudolstadt in more than a century brings to contemporary readers one of George Sand's most ambitious and engaging novels, hailed by many scholars of French literature as her masterpiece. Consuelo, or the Countess von Rudolstadt, born the penniless daughter of a Spanish gypsy, is transformed into an opera star by the great maestro Porpora. Her peregrinations throughout Europe (especially Vienna, Berlin, and the Bohemian forest), become a quest undertaken on a number of levels: as a singer, as a woman, and as an unwilling subject of alienation and oppression. Sand's heroine moves through a mid-eighteenth-century Europe where absolute rulers mingle with Enlightenment philosophers and gender-bending members of secret societies plot moral and political revolution. As the old order breaks down, she undergoes a series of grueling initiations into radically redefined notions of marriage and social organization. In a novel by equal measures philosophical and lurid, nothing is what it seems. Written some fifty years after the French Revolution, the book taps into many of the political and religious currents that contributed to that social upheaval—and aims to channel their potential for future change. Fed by Sand's rich imagination and bold aspirations for social reform, The Countess von Rudolstadt is a sinuous novel of initiation, continuing the coming of age tale of the titular heroine of Sand's earlier Consuelo and drawing on such diverse models as Ann Radcliffe's Gothic tales and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.
The romantic and rebellious novelist George Sand, born in 1804 as Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, remains one of France’s most infamous and beloved literary figures. Thanks to a peerless translation by Gretchen van Slyke, Martine Reid’s acclaimed biography of Sand is now available in English. Drawing on recent French and English biographies of Sand as well as her novels, plays, autobiographical texts, and correspondence, Reid creates the most complete portrait possible of a writer who was both celebrated and vilified. Reid contextualizes Sand within the literature of the nineteenth century, unfolds the meaning and importance of her chosen pen name, and pays careful attention to Sand’s political, artistic, and scientific expressions and interests. The result is a candid, even-handed, and illuminating representation of a remarkable woman in remarkable times. With its clear, flowing language and impeccable scholarship, this Ernest Montusès Award–winning biography of the author of La Petite Fadette and A Winter in Majorca will be of great interest to those specializing in Sand and nineteenth-century literature—and to readers everywhere.
Awarded the 2005 Jean-Pierre Barricelli Book Prize by the International Conference on Romanticism This book explores a cosmopolitan tradition of nineteenth-century novels written in response to Germaine de Staël's originary novel of the artist as heroine, corinne. The first book to delineate the contours of an international women's Romanticism, it argues that the künstlerromane of Mary Shelley, Bettine von Arnim, and George Sand offer feminist understandings of history and transcendence that constitute a critique of Romanticism from within. The book examines meditative, mystical and utopian visions of religious and artistic transcendence in the novels of women Romanticists as vehicles for the representation of a gendered subjectivity that seeks detachment and distance from the interests and strictures of the existing patriarchal social and cultural order. For these writers, the author argues, self-transcendence means an abandonment or dissolution of the individual self through political and spiritual efforts that culminate in a revelation of the divinity of a collective selfhood that comes into being through historical process.
Studies representations of women and death by women to see whether and how they differ from patriarchal versions.
Hailed as one of the foremost painters of the nineteenth century, Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) lived to see her name become a household word. In a century that did its best to keep women “in their place,” she earned her own money, managed her own property, wore trousers, hunted, smoked, and lived in retreat with women companions in a château near Fontainebleau. Rosa Bonheur: The Artist’s (Auto)biography brings this extraordinary woman to life, blending Bonheur’s first-person account with the memoirs of Anna Klumpke, a young American artist who was Bonheur’s last companion and chosen portraitist. Klumpke recounts their first meeting, her growing affection for the much older Bonheur, and her decision to live with the artist. Bonheur’s account of her own life story, set within Klumpke’s narrative, sheds light on such currently compelling subjects as gender formation, governmental intervention in the arts, the social and legal regulation of dress codes, and the transgressive nature of same-sex relationships in a repressive society. “What a pleasure to have this essential document of art history available in an up-to-date translation. Anna Klumpke’s biography of Rosa Bonheur is, of course, not only an important art-historical document, but a major contribution to the social history of nineteenth-century France and a moving testimony to human attachment as well.” —Linda Nochlin “The remarkable life of Rosa Bonheur, one of the most highly decorated artists and certainly the best known female artist of her time in nineteenth-century France, is long overdue for further scrutiny.” — Therese Dolan, Temple University “... tells the fascinating, unconventional story of the famous 19th-century French artist. Written by Bonheur’s lover, American artist Anna Klumpke, with input from Bonheur herself, the biography effectively shows Bonheur’s devotion to the great loves of her life: her mother, her art, and her female companions.” — Washington Blade “A cigar-smoking, cross-dressing eccentric à la George Sand, Rosa Bonheur was one of the 19th century’s most popular artists... Drawing on her own meticulous journal entries as well as Bonheur’s letters, sketches, and diaries, Klumpke traces Bonheur’s trailblazing life and recounts how she met Bonheur, fell in love and became her official portraitist, companion and sole heir.” — Publishers Weekly “It is a treat to have Rosa Bonheur: The Artist’s (Auto)biography... available in English. Bonheur (1822-1899), a lesbian born in France, channeled her formidable talent into painting animals, lived a highly unconventional life, and received special permission to wear pants in public... This combination autobiography and biography, originally published in 1908, includes a vibrant introduction by the translator.” —Feminist Bookstore News “Each part of the story — translator’s, Klumpke’s, and Bonheur’s — is so engagingly written that reading it is like an adventure with an emphasis on the development and support of female creativity... Anna Klumpke poured her love into magnificent portraits of Bonheur and later into writing and managing Bonheur’s estate. Translator Gretchen van Slyke has rendered the original French into graceful, compelling prose. After finishing this book, my strongest emotion was gratitude for having been allowed to see so intimately into the lives of these productive, caring women.” — Lambda Book Report