Recommendations
Books Like Obermann
Best books to read after Obermann by Senancour
Readers drawn into Senancour's meditative Alpine melancholy will find the French Romantic tradition he was part of, the Rousseauian predecessors he was developing, and the Victorian poets who found in him the most honest confrontation with spiritual desolation.
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René
by François-René de Chateaubriand
The companion text of French Romantic melancholy published two years before Obermann — the two texts are the defining pair of the mal du siècle; where René is brief and passionate, Obermann is long and reflective; reading both gives the full range of the form at its origins.
- 2Buy
Adolphe
by Benjamin Constant
The third great text of French Romantic male melancholy — where Obermann retreats into the Alps to meditate on the impossibility of happiness, Adolphe meditates on a specific failed love affair; the three texts (René, Obermann, Adolphe) together define the mal du siècle tradition in its first generation.
- 3Buy
Reveries of the Solitary Walker
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The predecessor that Obermann is directly developing — Rousseau's meditative prose, his Alpine landscape, and his sense of alienation from society are the direct sources of Obermann's mode; reading the Reveries alongside Obermann shows the line from Rousseau to Senancour and the transformation Senancour made.
- 4Buy
The Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The German predecessor of the whole French mal du siècle tradition — Werther's emotional oversensitivity is the German original of which René and Obermann are French developments; reading Werther alongside Obermann shows what Senancour inherited from the German Romantic tradition and how he transformed it.
- 5Buy
The Confession of a Child of the Century
by Alfred de Musset
The French novel that is the fullest later development of the mal du siècle tradition — Musset's Octave de T. is the Romantic youth destroyed by specific historical disillusionment after the fall of Napoleon; where Obermann's melancholy is timeless and metaphysical, Musset's is historical and generational.
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Selected Poetry of Matthew Arnold
by Matthew Arnold
Arnold's two Obermann poems ('Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann,' 1852, and 'Obermann Once More,' 1867) are the most important English tributes to Senancour's novel; Arnold found in Obermann an honesty about spiritual desolation that Victorian culture preferred to suppress, and reading both poems alongside the novel illuminates both.
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Corinne, or Italy
by Germaine de Staël
The companion French Romantic text that explores the same themes of alienation and the impossibility of happiness for exceptional souls in a different register — where Obermann meditates in the Alps, Corinne flourishes briefly in Rome before being destroyed by social convention; reading both shows the range of French Romantic responses to the same problem.
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The Flowers of Evil
by Charles Baudelaire
The mid-century French poetry collection that is the most important development of the mal du siècle tradition beyond the Romantic generation — Baudelaire's 'spleen' is the urban, modernist development of Obermann's Alpine melancholy; reading both shows the line from early Romantic pessimism to the first modern poetry.
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