Approaches to Teaching Rousseau's Confessions and Reveries of the Solitary Walker

Rousseau is read, literally, all over the world. Given the enormous place autobiographical writing has come to occupy in literary studies, his influence is not surprising. The Confessions, in which Rousseau relates most of the events of his life, and The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, which focuses on his last few years, are his primary contributions to this form, which he essentially reinvented in modern Western literature. Together, the two writings give voice to some of the major political, psychological, literary, ethical, and environmental concerns of our day. This breadth is reflected in the wide spectrum of courses in which Rousseau’s works are taught―courses on great books, world literature, political science, autobiography, travel, and women’s studies, as well as courses at all levels of French studies.

Like other volumes in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching series, this book is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” reviews the place of the Confessions and Reveries in Rousseau’s oeuvre, assesses editions in French and translations into English, provides guidance to important background readings and critical studies, and lists an array of audiovisual resources and Web sites devoted to Rousseau. In part 2, “Approaches,” contributors discuss the sources of Rousseau’s confessional writings, explore the new literary mode of autobiography, and consider the problems of the public responses to his work. They also scrutinize particular passages and investigate contemporary critical approaches as well as comparative approaches linking Rousseau to other writers, including Wordsworth and Baudelaire. Rounding out the volume are two useful compendiums―a chronology of Rousseau’s life and an annotated list of his other major works.

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.