In 1800, with low tones and evident disappointment from the extremes of the French Revolution, the daughter of Neker believes that the relationships between the laws, customs, religion, and literature of Europe have not been adequately analyzed. Trust in the ability to perfect the human species and in the power of progress seals the optimism for the emerging century. Going back to the origins, she attempts to highlight the causes of the stable differences between French, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German literature, attributing them to the institutions and the general spirit of each tradition. The relationships of literature with happiness, glory, and virtue become supports for the redefinition of the spiritual human being. The literatures of the North and the South favor the emergence of national characteristics and their interdependence with institutions. Beauty, the cultivation of competition, and eloquence are prerequisites for aesthetics.
In Madame de Stael's work, literature is analyzed as a product of her time, writing and reception are collective experiences determined by literature and institutions. The factors that constitute social life explain the particular form of literature.
With the tools of her time and through the prism of moderate urban thinking, the author discusses topics with paradoxical relevance, two hundred years later.