ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a similarly subversive aspect of Germaine de Stael's critique, in which she draws upon Jean-Jacques Rousseau's writings on music in order to controvert his views on female creativity. Rather than unilaterally adopting or eschewing Rousseau's views, Stael strategically incorporates his discourse into her novel. By granting Corinne access to a creative realm from which Rousseau considered her sex to be excluded, Stael endows her with a capacity for alternative means of expression, one that Helene Cixous would later re-locate in language. Stael's mastery of the stances characteristic of eighteenth-century aesthetic debate is most readily apparent in the salon conversations that take place between Corinne, her Italian compatriots, and her guests who are passing through Rome on their Italian tour. Stael's familiarity with the text sets her novel apart from previous literary characterizations of music, most of which were written before Rousseau's essay was either published or widely known.
