Confessions
Place on List:
II. Literary Genre: The
Novel
2.
How does a novel represent the individual's internal struggle?
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. Confessions.
(1782, France)
Supporting References:
- Birch, Dinah. "Rousseau, Jean-Jacques." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 16 Aug. 2013
The article offers
an overview of Rousseau and less a discussion on the above-cited
text.
“Rousseau,
Jean-Jacques (1712–78) Swiss writer and philosopher.
Born into a Protestant artisan family at Geneva, he was brought up
by various family members, his mother having died soon after his
birth. At the age of 15, he embarked upon the first of the travels
which would take him to many parts of Switzerland, France, and
Italy, and (in 1766–7) to England, where he famously quarrelled
with David
*Hume. Rousseau's fiery personality, extreme
sensitivity, and penchant for controversy fill his career with
dramatic episodes such as this; nevertheless, his contributions to
social and political philosophy, the novel, autobiography, moral
theology, and educational theory mark him out as one of the dominant
writers and thinkers of the age.
Rousseau made his name with the
publication in 1751 of his Discours sur les sciences et les arts
(Discourse on the Sciences and Arts), which had won first
prize in an essay competition organized by the Academy of Dijon;
within a year, it had twice been translated into English. In the
Discours, Rousseau argues that the development and spread of
knowledge and culture, far from improving human behaviour, has
corrupted it by promoting inequality, idleness, and luxury. The
Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité
(1755: Discours on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality),
reviewed by Adam
*Smith in the first Edinburgh
Review, contrasts the innocence and contentment
of primitive man in a ‘state of nature'—his mode of existence
determined by none but genuine needs—with the dissatisfaction and
perpetual agitation of modern social man, most of whom are condemned
to the legally sanctioned servitude necessary to preserve the
institution of private property. The suggestion by d'Alembert in his
Encyclopédie article on Geneva that a theatre should be
established in Rousseau's native city prompted the Lettre sur les
spectacles (1758: Letter on Theatre), in which the
passive nature of playgoing, the preoccupation of modern plays with
love, and the consequent unnatural bringing forward of women are seen
as dangerous symptoms of the ills of society.
A return to primitive innocence being
impossible, these ills were only to be remedied, Rousseau held, by
reducing the gap separating modern man from his natural archetype and
by modifying existing institutions in the interest of equality and
happiness. Such is the theme of his two novels: in Julie, ou la
Nouvelle Héloïse (1761: Julie, or the New Heloise), a
critical account of contemporary manners and ideas is interwoven with
the story of the passionate love of the tutor Saint Preux and his
pupil Julie, their separation, Julie's marriage to the Baron Wolmar,
and the dutiful, virtuous life shared by all three on the baron's
country estate; and Émile (1762) lays down the principles
for a new scheme of education in which the child is to be allowed
full scope for individual development in natural surroundings,
shielded from the harmful influences of civilization, in order to
form an independent judgement and a stable character. Also in 1762
Rousseau published Du contrat social (The Social
Contract), his theory of politics, in which he advocated
universal justice through equality before the law, a more equitable
distribution of wealth, and defined government as fundamentally a
matter of contract providing for the exercise of power in accordance
with the ‘general will’ and for the common good, by consent of
the citizens as a whole, in whom sovereignty ultimately resides.
As examples of unparalleled
self-insight and subtle self-analysis, Rousseau's last works, his
posthumously published autobiographical Confessions (1782–9)
and Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782: Reveries of
the Solitary Walker) are landmarks of the literature of personal
revelation (see autobiography).”
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