Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism Gender and Selfhood, Politics and Nation

by Goulbourne, Russell; Higgins, David

• ISBN13: 9781474250665
• ISBN10: 1474250661
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-05-18
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Bringing together leading scholars from the USA, Britain and Europe, this is the first substantial study of the seminal influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau – the great philosopher of the French Revolution – on British Romanticism.

Reconsidering Rousseau's connection to canonical Romantic authors such as Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism also explores his impact on Romantic-period nature writing, women's poetry, political discourse, and the Anti-Jacobin novel and the transnational contexts of British literary culture. Convincingly demonstrating that the relationship between Rousseau's thought and British Romanticism goes beyond mere reception or influence to encompass complex forms of connection, transmission and appropriation, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism is a vital new contribution to scholarly understanding of British Romantic literature.

Author Biography

Russell Goulbourne is Professor of French Literature at King's College, University of London, UK. He is the author of Voltaire Comic Dramatist (2006) and a scholarly translation of Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker (2011).

David Higgins is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Leeds, UK. He has published widely on Romantic-period literature, including the books Romantic Genius and the Literary Magazine (2005) and Romantic Englishness: Local, National, and Global Selves, 1780-1850 (2014).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Gender and Selfhood
1. Romantic-Era British Women Writers and the Refashioning of Rousseau (Stephen C. Behrendt, University of Nebraska, USA)
2. Rousseau's Godwin: A New Philosopher (Julie Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
3. Percy Shelley and Rousseau's 'pays des chimères' (Thomas Roche, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
4. 'For this is Love's recess': Finding a Place for Libertarian Masculinity in Rousseau's Julie and Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Helen Stark, Newcastle University, UK)
5. 'I fling myself at rocks': Rousseau and the Invention of Mountaineering in British Writing of the Romantic Period (Simon Bainbridge, Lancaster University, UK)
6. Rousseau and Wordsworth (Frances Ferguson, University of Chicago, USA)

Part II: Politics and Nation
7. Rousseau, Republicanism, and Switzerland (Patrick Vincent, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland)
8. Romanticism and Rousseau in Wales (Heather Williams, University of Wales, UK)
9. Reading Rousseau in the Anti-Jacobin Novel (Pascal Fischer, University of Würzburg, Germany)
10. Percy Bysshe Shelley's Rousseauvian Theatre (Rebecca Nesvet, University of Wisconsin (Green Bay), USA)
11. Sweet Nothing: Rousseauvian Idleness and Political Constructions of Romanticism (Rowan Boyson, King's College London, UK)
12. Rousseau and the Romantic Essayists (Gregory Dart, University College London, UK)
Bibliography
Index