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Jean-Jacques Rousseau sets out to show himself to his fellow men exactly as he was, good and bad. He tells of his childhood in Geneva, where his mother died…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau sets out to show himself to his fellow men exactly as he was, good and bad. He tells of his childhood in Geneva, where his mother died at his birth; a stolen ribbon he blamed on an innocent servant girl, a lie that haunted him for life; years of wandering and his deep attachment to Madame de Warens, who took him in at Annecy and Chambéry; his struggles in Paris as a music copyist and writer; his sudden fame; his companion Thérèse and the five children he gave to a foundling hospital; and the quarrels and persecutions of his later years.
Context and significance
Rousseau wrote the twelve books between 1765 and 1770, and they were published only after his death, in 1782 and 1789. Their frank self-examination and their attention to feeling and childhood made them a founding work of modern autobiography and of Romanticism. Compare the earlier Confessions of St. Augustine, and read Rousseau's ideas on education in Emile.
About the author
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born in Geneva, lost his mother days after his birth, ran away from an apprenticeship at fifteen and lived for years as a wanderer, a music copyist and the protégé of Madame de Warens. In 1750 an essay arguing that civilisation had corrupted humanity won a prize and made him famous overnight.
In 1762 he published both The Social Contract and Emile; both were condemned, and he had to flee. His Confessions, one of the first modern autobiographies, admits among other things that he placed his own five children in a foundling hospital. Few writers have influenced politics, education and the romantic idea of the self so deeply.