Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques; Scholar, Angela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192822756 ISBN 13: 9780192822758

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

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.

About this title

About the Author

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Geneva-born philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. Patrick Coleman is at University of California, Los Angeles. Angela Scholar was formerly at Oxford, Cambridge and London Universities.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192822756
• ISBN 13: 9780192822758
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 720
• Editor: Coleman Patrick