The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2009
- Publisher: General Books
- Format: Paperback, 164pp
- ISBN-13: 9780217625135
- ISBN: 0217625134
Synopsis
In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence.
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The genius as egocentric nudnikby Anonymous
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September 15, 2003: This is a turning point book in Western civilization, a great landmark in the exploration and discovery of the Self. Rousseau goes into more intimate and petty detail about his life than anyone has ever done before. At times this is amusing, very often it is boring. What is surprising is that it is by any standards a revelation of the genius as such a contemptible person. This is revealed especially in his relation to his own children, who he does his best to be rid of as soon as possible, and his terrible relation to the mother of his children. This work opened the way to Romantic subjectivity and the modern making the self the center of Literature and the world. The question for the reader is how much of this they will be able to take before they begin to feel sick.
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