This volume explores a variety of methods for teaching Rousseau's Confessions and Reveries of the Solitary Walker . Twenty contributions from educators discuss such topics as the author as celebrity and outcast, Baudelaire's caricature of Rousseau, and representations of femininity in the Confessions . A special section assesses editions in French and translations into English, and reviews other materials such as critical studies and audiovisual resources. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
John C. O'Neal is professor of French at Hamilton College. His publications include Changing Minds: The Shifting Perception of Culture in Eighteenth-Century France(2002), The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment(1996), and Seeing and Observing: Rousseau's Rhetoric of Perception(1985). O'Neal was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 1998 by the French minister of national education. Ourida Mostefai is associate professor of French at Boston College. She is the editor of Lectures de La Nouvelle Héloïse / Reading La Nouvelle Héloïse Today (1993) and the author of Le Citoyen de Genève et la République des Lettres: etude de la controverse autour de la Lettre Lettre à d'Alembert de Jean-Jacques Rosseau (2003). Mostefai has served as associate editor and editor of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, as well as director of publications and past president of the Rousseau Association. She is a former president of the Society for Eighteenth-Century French Studies.