Synopses & Reviews
The extraordinary life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century literary genius who changed the course of history, traced with novelistic verve.
Motherless child, failed apprentice, autodidact, impossibly odd lover, Jean-Jacques Rousseau burst unexpectedly onto the eighteenth-century scene as a literary provocateur whose works electrified readers from the start. Rousseauand#8217;s impact on American social and political thought remains deep, wide, and, to some, even infuriating.
Leo Damrosch beautifully mines Rousseauand#8217;s books--The Social Contract, one of the greatest works on political theory and a direct influence on the French and American revolutions; Emile, a groundbreaking treatise on education; and the Confessions, which created the genre of introspective autobiography--as works still uncannily alive and provocative to us today.
Damroschand#8217;s triumph is to integrate the story of Rousseauand#8217;s extraordinarily original writings with the tumultuous life that produced them. Rousseauand#8217;s own words and those of people who knew him help create an accessible, vivid portrait of a questing man whose strangeness--as punishing and punished lover, difficult friend, and father who famously consigned his infant children to a foundling home--still fascinates. This, the first single-volume biography of Rousseau in English, is as masterfully written as it is definitive.
Leo Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University. He has written widely on eighteenth-century writers.
Praise for Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Leo Damrosch's vivid biography enables us to plunge deeply into Rousseau's singular life, conjure up its crucial encounters, retrace its twisting paths, and supplement Rousseau's own claims about himself with the detailed, often contradictory testimony of the contemporaries he so unsettled and inspired." -- Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
"These pages bring to life the Europe of the ancien regime, a desiccated, sybaritic, superstitious, oppressive world about to be terribly and fatally convulsed. And they also bring to astonishing life a great agent of that convulsion, an impossible man whose books helped to make modern life possible. Leo Damrosch not only helps us understand Rousseau, his loves and his hates, his genius and his foolishness. He makes us see Rousseau. And, as he shows again and again in this immensely enjoyable and fast-paced story, that is Rousseauand#8217;s special and permanent fascination--because when we see him, we are seeing ourselves."-- Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club and American Studies
Review
'\"These pages...bring to astonishing life...an impossible man whose books made modern life possible....Immensely enjoyable and fast-paced.\" --Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club and American Studies'
Review
'\"An incisive, accessible, and sensitive portrait . . . Damrosch has performed a signal service.\"'
Review
"These pages...bring to astonishing life...an impossible man whose books made modern life possible....Immensely enjoyable and fast-paced." --Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club and American Studies
"An incisive, accessible, and sensitive portrait . . . Damrosch has performed a signal service." Publishers Weekly
"The erratic, inventive urgency of the life is all here. A delight to read." --Stacy Schiff The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau burst unexpectedly onto the eighteenth-century literary scene as a provocateur whose works electrified readers. An autodidact who had not written anything of significance by age thirty, Rousseau seemed an unlikely candidate to become one of the most influential thinkers in history. Yet the power of his ideas is felt to this day in our political and social lives.
In a masterly and definitive biography, Leo Damrosch traces the extraordinary life of Rousseau with novelistic verve. He presents Rousseau's books -- The Social Contract, one of the greatest works on political theory; Emile, a groundbreaking treatise on education; and the Confessions, which created the genre of introspective autobiography -- as works uncannily alive and provocative even today. Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers a vivid portrait of the visionaryand#8217;s tumultuous life.
About the Author
LEO DAMROSCH was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, among other honors. Currently the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of literature at Harvard University, he has written widely on eighteenth-century writers. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations vii Introduction 1 1. The Loneliness of a Gifted Child 7 2. The End of Innocence 25 3. and#147;I Desired a Happiness of Which I Had No Ideaand#8221; 43 4. Rousseau Finds a Mother 69 5. A Year of Wandering 88 6. In Mamanand#8217;s House 104 7. The Idyll of Les Charmettes 125 8. Broadening Horizons: Lyon and Paris 149 9. The Masks of Venice 168 10. A Life Partner and a Guilty Secret 184 11. A Writerand#8217;s Apprenticeship 196 12. The Beginnings of Fame 211 13. Rousseauand#8217;s Originality 234 14. Lionized in Geneva, Alienated in Paris 244 15. An Affair of the Heart 256 16. The Break with the Enlightenment 284 17. Peace at Last and the Triumph of Julie 306 18. Rousseau the Controversialist: and#201;mile and The Social Contract 331 19. Exile in the Mountains 362 20. Another Expulsion 388 21. In a Strange Land 403 22. The Past Relived 434 23. Into the Self-Made Labyrinth 447 24. The Final Years in Paris 464 Timeline of Rousseauand#8217;s Life 495 Notes 499 Index 550