On Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Subtitle: considered as one of the first authors of the Revolution
By: James Swenson.
Series: Atopia; Atopia (Stanford, Calif.)
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
Subjects: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 -- Criticism and interpretation; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 -- Political and social views; Politics and literature -- France -- History -- 18th century; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Literature and the revolution; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Historiography
Genres: Literature and the revolution.; Historiography.
Description: "In order to grasp what it means to call Rousseau an "author" of the Revolution, as so many revolutionaries did, it is necessary to take full measure of the difficulties of literary interpretation to which Rousseau's work gives rise, particularly around such a charged term as "author."" "On Jean-Jacques Rousseau shows that Rousseau's texts consistently generate a division in their own reading, a division both designated and masked by the fiction of authorship. These divisions can occur successively - as in the narrative reversals and discontinuities characteristic of Rousseau's fictional and autobiographical works - or simultaneously, in the form of incompatible attempts to apply the lessons of a single text to an urgent historical moment. Given the structure of these texts, their "influence" can only occur in an equally paradoxical form. Rousseau's contribution to revolutionary thinking lies in his conceptualization of the constitutive function of misunderstanding and narrative discontinuity, in history and political action as well as in literature."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-313) and index.