- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
-
Chapter 1 The Eighteenth Century -
Chapter 2 Genius Obscured -
Chapter 3 Language, Religion, Nation -
Chapter 4 Individual versus Collective Genius -
Chapter 5 The Romantic Poet and the Brotherhood of Genius -
Chapter 6 Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, and the Dynasty of Genius -
Chapter 7 Genius under Observation -
Chapter 8 Genius, Neurosis, and Family Trees -
Chapter 9 Genius Restored to Health -
Chapter 10 A Novel of Female Genius -
Chapter 11 Balzac’s Louis Lambert -
Chapter 12 Creativity and Procreation in Zola’s L’Œuvre -
Chapter 13 Exemplarity and Performance in Literature for Children -
Chapter 14 Alfred Binet and the Measurement of Intelligence -
Chapter 15 Minou Drouet -
Chapter 16 Cultural Critique and the End of Genius -
Chapter 17 The Return of Genius -
Chapter 18 Julia Kristeva and Female Genius -
Chapter 19 Derrida, Cixous, and the Impostor - Bibliography
- Index
Language, Religion, Nation
Language, Religion, Nation
- Chapter:
- (p.47) Chapter 3 Language, Religion, Nation
- Source:
- Genius in France
- Author(s):
Ann Jefferson
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
This chapter traces the popular usage of “genius” in the nineteenth century. If genius no longer has the self-evidence that was attributed to it in the eighteenth century, this is due in part to the profligacy with which the word had come to be used. While the term is widely invoked—in fact, ever more widely so—it is rarely the subject of sustained theoretical scrutiny of the type established by aesthetics and philosophy in the previous century. The genius celebrated in this popular usage was, more often than not, a collective phenomenon linking success or supremacy with the individual character of institutional or abstract entities in a way that combined genius as ingenium with genius as the form of superlative excellence.
Keywords: nineteenth century, national genius, collective genius
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
-
Chapter 1 The Eighteenth Century -
Chapter 2 Genius Obscured -
Chapter 3 Language, Religion, Nation -
Chapter 4 Individual versus Collective Genius -
Chapter 5 The Romantic Poet and the Brotherhood of Genius -
Chapter 6 Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, and the Dynasty of Genius -
Chapter 7 Genius under Observation -
Chapter 8 Genius, Neurosis, and Family Trees -
Chapter 9 Genius Restored to Health -
Chapter 10 A Novel of Female Genius -
Chapter 11 Balzac’s Louis Lambert -
Chapter 12 Creativity and Procreation in Zola’s L’Œuvre -
Chapter 13 Exemplarity and Performance in Literature for Children -
Chapter 14 Alfred Binet and the Measurement of Intelligence -
Chapter 15 Minou Drouet -
Chapter 16 Cultural Critique and the End of Genius -
Chapter 17 The Return of Genius -
Chapter 18 Julia Kristeva and Female Genius -
Chapter 19 Derrida, Cixous, and the Impostor - Bibliography
- Index
