Identidades Norte/Sur: apuntes sobre Madame de Staël y la tópica romántica

Abstract

With the arrival of Romanticism, a new imaginary about North/South identities emerged that was to achieve rapid success and considerable validity for decades. The Mediterranean-classicist hegemony sees the cultural and political power, held by the South for many centuries, transferred to the German-Romantic world. This paper analyzes Madame de Staël’s opinions on the matter, which were favorable to the Nordic culture that established a series of simple antitheses on the two identities, thus facilitating their transformation into clichés and their rapid dissemination. They were likewise ideologically exploited by the most conservative Romanticism, a defender of literary nationalism and of a Christian and monarchical literature.