Download or read book The Role of the Reader in Rousseau s Confessions written by Catherine A. Beaudry and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 1991 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jean-Jacques Rousseau created the autobiographical genre in 1766 when he began his Confessions. Before him, readers were familiar with Christian apologetics and memoirs, but not with a modern autobiography. This book examines the role Rousseau requires his rhetorical reader to play, if he be in earnest, and it offers the contrasting reactions of real readers who when faced with the final version of the text were stunned by what they read, for the Confessions went far beyond all expectations in their belligerence, their intimacy of detail and their overwhelming critique of the social institutions of the ancien régime. The study shows how readers past and present refer time and again to the same passages, always heavily embedded with caveats and exhortations to the reader.
Download or read book The Confessions written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published by Wordsworth Editions. This book was released on 1996 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a frank treatment of Rousseau's sexual and intellectual development. It offers a model for the reflective life: the solitary, uncompromising individual; the enemy of servitude and habit; and the selfish egoist who dedicates himself to a particular ideal.
Download or read book The Confessions of J J Rousseau written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published by . This book was released on 1790 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rousseau Confessions written by Peter France and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to Rousseau's Confessions.
Download or read book Rousseau s Exemplary Life written by Christopher Kelly and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this stimulating reading of Rousseau's Confessions, Christopher Kelly breaks down the artificial distinction traditionally made between this autobiographical work and Rousseau's overtly philosophical works. At the same time, Kelly provides us with the most complete commentary on the Confessions written in any language.
Download or read book Mr Mee written by Andrew Crumey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-03-06 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mr. Mee, a reclusive British book collector, tries to track down a copy of a long-vanished Rosier's Encyclopedia, while Dr. Petrie, a professor of French literature, falls in love with one of his students, and 18th century copyists Ferrand and Minard arecharged with reproducing Rosier's original manuscript.
Download or read book Rousseau s Reader written by John T. Scott and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-05-06 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On his famous walk to Vincennes to visit the imprisoned Diderot, Rousseau had what he called an “illumination”—the realization that man was naturally good but becomes corrupted by the influence of society—a fundamental change in Rousseau’s perspective that would animate all of his subsequent works. At that moment, Rousseau “saw” something he had hitherto not seen, and he made it his mission to help his readers share that vision through an array of rhetorical and literary techniques. In Rousseau’s Reader, John T. Scott looks at the different strategies Rousseau used to engage and persuade the readers of his major philosophical works, including the Social Contract, Discourse on Inequality, and Emile. Considering choice of genre; textual structure; frontispieces and illustrations; shifting authorial and narrative voice; addresses to readers that alternately invite and challenge; apostrophe, metaphor, and other literary devices; and, of course, paradox, Scott explores how the form of Rousseau’s writing relates to the content of his thought and vice versa. Through this skillful interplay of form and content, Rousseau engages in a profoundly transformative dialogue with his readers. While most political philosophers have focused, understandably, on Rousseau’s ideas, Scott shows convincingly that the way he conveyed them is also of vital importance, especially given Rousseau’s enduring interest in education. Giving readers the key to Rousseau’s style, Scott offers fresh and original insights into the relationship between the substance of his thought and his literary and rhetorical techniques, which enhance our understanding of Rousseau’s project and the audiences he intended to reach.
Download or read book The Confessions of J J Rousseau written by Jean Jacques Rousseau and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: The Confessions of J.J. Rousseau by Jean Jacques Rousseau
Download or read book The Surprising Effects of Sympathy written by David Marshall and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through readings of works by Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley, David Marshall provides a new interpretation of the eighteenth-century preoccupation with theatricality and sympathy. Sympathy is seen not as an instance of sensibility or natural benevolence but rather as an aesthetic and epistemological problem that must be understood in relation to the problem of theatricality. Placing novels in the context of eighteenth-century writing about theater, fiction, and painting, Marshall argues that an unusual variety of authors and texts were concerned with the possibility of entering into someone else's thoughts and feelings. He shows how key eighteenth-century works reflect on the problem of how to move, touch, and secure the sympathy of readers and beholders in the realm of both "art" and "life." Marshall discusses the demands placed upon novels to achieve certain effects, the ambivalence of writers and readers about those effects, and the ways in which these texts can be read as philosophical meditations on the differences and analogies between the experiences of reading a novel, watching a play, beholding a painting, and witnessing the spectacle of someone suffering. The Surprising Effects of Sympathy traces the interaction of sympathy and theater and the artistic and philosophical problems that these terms represent in dialogues about aesthetics, moral philosophy, epistemology, psychology, autobiography, the novel, and society.
Download or read book Jean Jacques Rousseau written by Leopold Damrosch and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructs the life of the French literary genius whose writing changed opinions and fueled fierce debate on both sides of the Atlantic during the period of the American and French revolutions.
Download or read book A Reinterpretation of Rousseau written by J. Alberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this radical reinterpretation of Rousseau, Jeremiah Alberg argues that the philosopher's system of thought is founded on theological scandal, and on Rousseau's inability to accept forgiveness. Alberg explores his views in relation to alternative forms of Christianity.
Download or read book Allegories of Reading written by Paul De Man and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1979-01-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important theoretical work by Paul de Man sets forth a mode of reading and interpretation based on exemplary texts by Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. The readings start from unresolved difficulties in the critical traditions engendered by these authors, and they return to the places in the text where those difficulties are most apparent or most incisively reflected upon. The close reading leads to the elaboration of a more general model of textual understanding, in which de Man shows that the thematic aspects of the texts--their assertions of truth or falsehood as well as their assertions of values--are linked to specific modes of figuration that can be identified and described. The description of synchronic figures of substitution leads, by an inner logic embedded in the structure of all tropes, to extended, narrative figures or allegories. De Man poses the question whether such self-generating systems of figuration can account fully for the intricacies of meaning and of signification they produce. Throughout the book, issues in contemporary criticism are addressed analytically rather than polemically. Traditional oppositions are put in question by a rhetorical analysis which demonstrates why literary texts are such powerful sources of meaning yet epistemologically so unreliable. Since the structure which underlies this tension belongs to language in general and is not confined to literary texts, the book, starting out as practical and historical criticism or as the demonstration of a theory of literary reading, leads into larger questions pertaining to the philosophy of language. "Through elaborate and elegant close readings of poems by Rilke, Proust's Remembrance, Nietzsche's philosophical writings and the major works of Rousseau, de Man concludes that all writing concerns itself with its own activity as language, and language, he says, is always unreliable, slippery, impossible....Literary narrative, because it must rely on language, tells the story of its own inability to tell a story....De Man demonstrates, beautifully and convincingly, that language turns back on itself, that rhetoric is untrustworthy."--Julia Epstein, Washington Post Book World "The study follows out of the thinking of Nietzsche and Genette (among others), yet moves in strikingly new directions....De Man's text, almost certain to be endlessly provocative, is worthy of repeated re-reading."--Ralph Flores, Library Journal "Paul de Man continues his work in the tradition of 'deconstructionist criticism, '... which] begins with the observation that all language is constructed; therefore the task of criticism is to deconstruct it and reveal what lies behind. The title of his new work reflects de Man's preoccupation with the unreliability of language. ... The contributions that the book makes, both in the initial theoretical chapters and in the detailed analyses (or deconstructions) of particular texts are undeniable."--Caroline D. Eckhardt, World Literature Today
Download or read book Sex Lies and Autobiography written by James L. O'Rourke and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sex, Lies, and Autobiography James O'Rourke explores the relationships between literary form and ethics, revealing how autobiographical texts are able to confront readers with the moral complexities of everyday life. Tracing the ethical legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions in a series of English-language texts, the author shows how Rousseau's doubts about the possibility of ethical behavior in everyday life shadows the first-person narratives of five canonic works: William Wordsworth's Prelude, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Villette, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Offering a fascinating new way of thinking about ethics through literature, Sex, Lies, and Autobiography challenges the most fundamental principles of the philosophical study of ethics, revealing the innate difference between morality in life and morality in literature. O'Rourke begins with Rousseau's inability to reconcile his intuitive belief that he is a good person with the effects that his actions have on others, and he goes on to show how this same ethical impasse recurs in the five aforementioned texts. The ethical crises these texts describe, such as when Jane Eyre's happiness can be purchased only at the cost of Bertha Mason's suicide, or when Humbert Humbert's artistry demands the sacrifice of Dolores Haze, are not instances of authorial ethical blindness, O'Rourke says, but rather are ethical challenges that force us as readers to consider our own lives. In each of these works, a narrator attempts to justify his or her behavior and fails; in each case, the rigorous narrative of self-examination demands a similar effort from the reader, whose own sense of moral rectitude is put into question. Confronting the long-held philosophical construction that links ethical principles and life choices, thereby reassuring us of the ethical coherence of everyday life, the narrators of these literary autobiographies come to a very different conclusion; by looking back on their lives, they cannot understand how their most benevolent desires led to such damaging life stories. By leaving meaning inexplicit, O'Rourke argues, these texts are able to recover traumatic material that is ordinarily repressed and then bring that repressed knowledge to bear on self-justifying narratives. For readers interested in autobiographical studies, ethical criticism, and trauma and literary studies, Sex, Lies, and Autobiography provides a groundbreaking analysis of the role of ethics in literature.
Download or read book The Reveries of the Solitary Walker written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the soul in the form of a final meditation on self-understanding and isolation.
Download or read book Character and Conversion in Autobiography written by Patrick Riley and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging predominant theories of subjectivity in autobiography, Character and Conversion in Autobiography recognizes subjectivity as a dynamic process and suggests a redefinition of how we examine character and life writing.
Download or read book Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment written by Mary Seidman Trouille and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1997-08-28 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment constitutes the first book-length feminist study of Rousseau's sexual politics and the reception of his works by women readers. By today's standards, Rousseau's sexual politics appear reactionary, paternalistic, even blatantly misogynist; yet, among his female contemporaries, his works often met with enthusiastic approval and had tremendous impact on their values and behavior. To probe Rousseau's paradoxical appeal to eighteenth-century readers, Mary Trouille examines how seven women authors responded to his writings and sexual politics and traces his influence on their lives and works. The writers include six Frenchwomen (Roland, d'Epinay, Stael, Genlis, Gouges, and an anonymous woman correspondent who called herself Henriette) and the English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. The book constitutes an important contribution to French literature, women's studies, and eighteenth-century cultural studies. While a great deal has already been written on the individual women whom Trouille treats, what distinguishes this book is that it places multiple female subjects directly opposite Rousseau, and succeeds in showing that the relationship between mentor and student(s) is both multi-layered and fascinatingly complex.
Download or read book Compelling Confessions written by Suzanne Diamond and published by Fairleigh Dickinson. This book was released on 2010-12-10 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compelling Confessions: The Politics of Personal Disclosure is a collection of essays whose shared purpose is to offer an accessible interdisciplinary exploration of the social dynamics behind confessional discourse. As various contributors to this collection demonstrate, confession is ubiquitous in contemporary culture, not only within psychological or therapeutic frameworks or literary analysis, but also in internet discussion groups, in the criminal justice system, in political rhetoric, in so-called 'reality' and interview-style television programming, in writing pedagogy and, increasingly, in the testimonial strain observable in contemporary scholarship. Yet, 'telling one's story' raises questions, not only about authorial intent or authenticity, but also about the pressures disclosure can impose upon its audiences. Far less ubiquitous than confessions themselves, as these contributors suggest, are the critical tools that general audiences might employ in order to better evaluate the rhetoric of personal disclosure. It is, in fact, the shortage of such tools – responses and procedures that could be stated plainly and implemented by any reader or viewer – that Compelling Confessions sets out to address.
