(Un)Manly citizens
Subtitle: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and Germaine de Staël's subversive women
By: Lori Jo Marso.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 172
Subjects: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 -- Characters -- Women.; Staël, Madame de 1766-1817 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Staël, Madame de 1766-1817 -- Characters -- Women.; Women in literature.; Citizenship in literature.; Feminism and literature.
Other titles: Unmanly citizens; Un-manly citizens
Description: In (Un)Manly Citizens, political theorist Lori Marso explores an alternative vision of citizenship in the writings of French Enlightenment figures Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Germaine de Stael. This critique transgresses the boundary between political philosophy and literature in turning explicitly to fictional texts as the site of an alternative conception of the self, citizenship, and democratic politics.

Marso departs from previous feminist scholarship on Rousseau by reading Emile and La Nouvelle Heloise from the perspective of his women characters.

Germaine de Stael builds on the perspective of Rousseau's women to uncover the radical potential of the feminine as a way to reconceptualize citizenship. Marso's scholarship makes us aware of how early in the history of modern political thought the potential of an unmanly vision of citizenship as a radical critique of politics was already being discussed and formulated.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [159]-165) and index.