Lloyd Kramer offers a new interpretation of the cultural and
political significance of the career of the Marquis de Lafayette,
which spanned the American Revolution, the French Revolutions of
1789 and 1830, and the Polish Uprising of 1830-31. Moving beyond
traditional biography, Kramer traces the wide-ranging influence of
Lafayette's public and personal life, including his contributions
to the emergence of nationalist ideologies in Europe and America,
his extensive connections with liberal political theorists, and his
close friendships with prominent writers, many of them women.
Kramer places Lafayette on the cusp of the two worlds of America
and France, politics and literature, the Enlightenment and the
Romantic movement, public affairs and private life, revolution and
nationalism, and men and women. He argues that Lafayette's
experiences reveal how public figures can symbolize the aspirations
of a society as a whole, and he stresses Lafayette's important role
in a cultural network of contemporaries that included Germaine de
Stael, Benjamin Constant, Frances Wright, James Fenimore Cooper,
and Alexis de Tocqueville. History/Biography