Description
`For forty years I have defended the same principle: freedom in everything, in religion, in philosophy, in literature, in industry, in politics - and by freedom I mean the triumph of the individual.'
Constant thus summarized his beliefs at the end of his life. A political theorist and a passionate defender of individual liberty, he was also the author of one of the greatest French novels of psychological insight, Adolphe. In a major new biography Dennis Wood traces the development of Constant as a writer centrally preoccupied with the problematics of freedom, not only in the fields of politics and religious belief but also in his own troubled relationship with several women.
Table of Contents
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
