Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Autobiographical Dimension

This is the text, with a few modifications, of a paper presented in Canterbury at a colloquium (one of a regular series held by the universities of Kent and Sussex) on 11 June, 1977.

See P. Lejeune , "Autobiographie et histoire littéraire", Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, lxxv (1975), 903-30, esp. pp. 928 and 930. This article, which, like several others, is included by the author in Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris, 1975), provides a penetrating review of the important literature in the field, whatever reservations one may have about the abstract search for method.

See G. Gusdorf , "De l'autobiographie initiatique à l'autobiographie genre littéraire", RHLF, lxxv (1975), 957-1002, esp. p. 959 and Lejeune's comments pp. 995-6.

See G. Gusdorf's comments, op. cit., 961. The same thought as Lejeune's is expressed in less doctrinaire spirit by J. Voisine , "Le Dialogue avec le lecteur dans Les Confessions", in Jean-Jacques Rousseau et son oeuvre (Paris, 1964), 23-32: "La forme autobiographique, qu'on peut dire sans exagération au sens précis du mot, inventée par Rousseau, implique le dialogue entre un moi présent et un moi passé" (p. 24). Cf. also G. Rannaud , "Le Moi et ses figures: Souvenirs d'égotisme et Vie de Henry Brulard", in V. del Litto (ed.), Stendhal et les problèmes de l'autobiographie (Grenoble, 1976), 93-103: "Dans l'autobiographie ... telle qu'elle se constitue à partir de Rousseau .... Il ne s'agit plus ... de conformité, mais de revendication de singularité" (p. 95).

Cf. Gusdorf , op. cit., 967-78 and esp. p. 978.

The importance (or part of the importance) to literary criticism of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953) is in its critique of "absolutist" views of language (in our case literary and literary-critical language) according to which a proposition supposes the whole of language. In establishing this critique, the idea of 'family resemblance' is used in order to show that a family (cf., for our purposes, autobiography) is still recognisably a family although no one member has all the family traits and although two individual family members may bear but little resemblance specifically to each other.

J.F. Ihwe , "The Philosophy of Literary Criticism Reconsidered. On the 'Logic' of Interpretation", Poetics, v (1976), 339-72, p. 339. See also, in philosophical vein, E. D. Hirsch's penetrating discussion of "The Concept of Genre" in his Validity in Interpretation ( New Haven and London, 1967), chap. 3.

R.G. Saisselin , "Rousseau and portraiture", Studies on Voltaire and the 18th Century, lx (Geneva , 1968), 201-24, p. 209.

See R. A. Leigh (ed.), Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau; to date have appeared vols i-xiv (Geneva, 1965-71 ); vols xv-xxvii (Banbury , 1972-76). Further references will be in the form: Leigh I (1), 1; i.e. Correspondance complète, vol. i, letter 1, p. 1.

See iii, xliv; i.e. J.J. Rousseau , Oeuvres complètes, vol. iii (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, 1964), p. xliv. All further references to the four volumes of this edition which have appeared will be in this form.

Society is conceived, negatively, as a confidence trick by the rich upon the poor (iii, 177).

The Latin tag from Perseus which he places at the end of his preface (iii, 127) is in a thoroughly Socratic spirit.

See Gusdorf, op. cit. (ref. 3); J. Voisine, "De la confession religieuse à l'autobiographie et au journal intime: entre 1760 et 1820", Neohelicon (Budapest and Paris , 1974), 337-57; and J. Voisine , "Essai de préhistoire intérieure des Confessions", Information Littéraire, xxviii (1976), 7-19.

J. Starobinski , "Rousseau et la recherche des origines", Cahiers du Sud, no. 367 (1962), republ with La Transparence et l'obstacle (2nd rev. ed., Paris, 1971), 320.

See i, 53, n. 3.

See ii, 557-61 and J. Starobinski , La Transparence et l'obstacle (2nd rev. ed., Paris, 1971), esp. chap. 5.

Phyllis K. Leffler , "The Histoire raisonnée (1660-1720): A pre-Enlightenment genre". Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxvii (1976). 219-41, p. 223.

P. Estève , L'Esprit des beaux-arts, ou Histoire raisonnée du goût ( Paris, 1753), 100 (on the history of tragedy).

See R. Wokler , "Rameau, Rousseau and the Essai sur l'origine des langues", Studies on Voltaire and the 18th Century cxvii (Banbury, 1974), 179-238 (pp. 205-6); and M.-E. Duchez , "Principe de la mélodie et Origine des langues, un brouillon inédit de Jean-Jacques Rousseau sur l'origine de la mélodie", Revue de musicologie, lx (1974), 33-86 (p. 63). These two scholarly articles represent an important advance in our knowledge of the Essai and of its date.

For more discussion of the implications of these remarks, see P. Robinson , "Rousseau, Music and the Ancients", in The Classical Tradition in French Literature (London, 1977), 203-15.

The complex philosophical problems implicit in these short remarks are discussed at length by J. Derrida , De la Grammatologie ( Paris, 1976), pp. 269 et seq. This work constitutes an authoritative study on the Essai sur l'origine des langues.

See C. Lévi-Strauss , "J. J. Rousseau, fondateur des sciences de l'homme ", in Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Neuchâtel, 1962), esp. p. 240.

A contemporary such as Trublet, writing in his journal, is capable of perceptive observation and subtle judgment concerning this relation between discourse and experience: "Quant à son caractère personnel, Duclos dit que c'est un caractère factice et non pas faux. Il est de bonne foi, du moins à présent; peut-être ne l'a-t-il pas été entièrement d'abord; mais s'il y a en lui de l'affecté, du faux, ce n'est pas à mauvaise intention. Le véritable hypocrite paraît pour paraître; Rousseau parait pour être." (Abbé Trublet, Journal for 2 May 1755, in Leigh, III (Appx. 142), 350-1.)

It is also a pastoral prose poem of considerable stature as is shown in an excellent recent study: C. McD. Vance, The Extravagant Shepherd : A study of the pastoral vision in Rousseau's "La Nouvelle Héloïse", Studies on Voltaire and the 18th Century, cv (Banbury, 1973).

Cf. J. Starobinski , op. cit. (ref. 14), 325-8.