If the writings of Chateaubriand, one above all is both most representative of its author and most significant for reader and student alike. René, a milestone of literature, presents the first genuine and complete picture of that state of spiritual frustration and moral isolation known as le mal du siècle, its causes, symptoms, ravages, and cure. Chateaubriand, a prodigious artist with an incomparable style, enjoys the further distinction of having fused in his work the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. It is sometimes forgotten that these epochs are not only French but also European in scope, and their reverberations as expressed by Chateaubriand have affected almost every subsequent writer of importance up to the present. Chateaubriand is often called the father of romanticism. It may be claimed with equal reason that he is the grandfather of the neo-romanticism of our time. This edition of René contains, as well as a full introduction, notes covering the allusions to place names, events, and personages, and a complete vocabulary.

The second part of an infamous memoir about life in the time of Napoleon by a rebellious literary celebrity. In 1800, François-René de Chateaubriand sailed from the cliffs of Dover to the headlands of Calais. He was thirty-one and had been living as a political refugee in England for most of a decade, at times in such extreme poverty that he subsisted on nothing but hot water and two-penny rolls. Over the next fifteen years, his life was utterly changed. He published Atala, René, and The Genius of Christianity to acclaim and epoch-making scandal. He strolled the streets of Jerusalem and mapped the ruins of Carthage. He served Napoleon in Rome, then resigned in protest after the Duc d’Enghien’s execution, putting his own life at tremendous risk. Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1800–1815—the second volume in Alex Andriesse’s new and complete translation of this epic French classic—is a chronicle of triumphs and sorrows, narrating not only the author’s life during a tumultuous period in European history but the “parallel life” of Napoleon. In these pages, Chateaubriand continues to paint his distinctive self-portrait, in which the whole history of France swirls around the sitter like a mist of dreams.

The most enjoyable, glamorous and gripping of all 19th-century autobiographies - a tumultuous account of France hit by wave after wave of revolutions Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb is the greatest and most influential of all French autobiographies - an extraordinary, highly entertaining account of a uniquely adventurous and frenzied life. Chateaubriand gives a superb narrative of the major events of his life - which spanned the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Era and the uneasy period that led up to the Revolution of 1830.

Realpoetik considers the relationship between literary and political ideas in the thought of key European writers of the Romantic period examining how the main historical events of the period encouraged a re-imagining of the political shape of Europe which also changed the way we think about imagination itself.

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The Last of the Abencerrajes - François-René de Chateaubriand. A translation into English by A. S. Kline. Illustrated with Lithographs by Francisco Javier Parcerisa. Chateaubriand's tale of a great love thwarted by religion and destiny, is set in 15th century Spain, and centres on the last of the Moorish tribe of the Abencerrages who, legend has it, held high position in the kingdom of Granada. The city was the last to be governed by the Moors, and its surrender to Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492, by Muhammad XII (Boabdil) marked the end of the Reconquista and the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain. The idea of a doomed relationship between a Christian and a Muslim protagonist appears in a number of earlier works in Europe, for example the 12th or 13th century French chantefable of Aucassin and Nicolette, while the theme of lovers separated by fate, exemplified by Romeo and Juliet or the historical 12th century figures of Abélarde and Héloïse, had particular appeal for Chateaubriand, who gives us variations of the idea in his American novellas Atala and René. A particular strength of this story of Granada, besides the charm of its telling and the beauty of its setting, is Chateaubriand's ability to give equal weight and sympathy to two diverse cultures, while himself believing in the ultimate superiority of the Christian faith. This exaltation of human virtues above particular time and circumstance is one of Chateaubriand's most endearing characteristics. This and other texts available from Poetry in Translation (www.poetryintranslation.com).

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the important and paradoxical relation between women and the French Revolution. Although the male leaders of the Revolution depended on the women's active militant participation, they denied to women the rights they helped to establish. At the same time that women were banned from the political sphere, "woman" was transformed into an allegorical figure which became the very symbol of (masculine) Liberty and Equality. This volume analyzes how the revolutionary process constructed a new gender system at the foundation of modern liberal culture.