The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Name: The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
ISBN: 9780486780429

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

4.5

(4 ratings)

683 pages2014Courier CorporationISBN 9780486780429

Biography

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About this book

Only a few popular autobiographies existed before philosopher, author, and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) published his Confessions. Rousseau wrote treatises on education and politics as well as novels and operas, and as one of the most influential and controversial of the Enlightenment thinkers, he inspired the leaders of the French Revolution. His memoir is regarded as the first modern autobiography, in which the writer defined his life mainly in terms of his worldly experiences and personal feelings. These memoirs constitute the main source of Rousseau's reputation as a leader in the transition from eighteenth-century reason to nineteenth-century romanticism. His emphasis on the effects of childhood experiences anticipates the psychology of Sigmund Freud, and his conviction that the individual is worthy of account forms a major contribution to progressive social and political thought. The book has inspired many imitations in autobiography, fiction, and poetry, and it has influenced the works of Proust, Goethe, Tolstoy, and countless others.

Publication Details

Publisher: Courier Corporation
Published: 2014
Pages: 683
ISBN: 9780486780429
Language: en

About Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major Genevois philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. His novel, *Emile: or, On Education*, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, was of great importance to the development of pre-Romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau's autobiographical writings: his *Confessions*, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his *Reveries of a Solitary Walker* were among the pre-eminent examples of the late 18th-century movement known as the "Age of Sensibility", featuring an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection that has characterized the modern age. Rousseau also made important contributions to music as a theorist. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.[1][1] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau