Jean-Jacques Rousseau

by Damrosch, Leopold

• ISBN13: 9780618872022
• ISBN10: 0618872027
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-14
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau burst unexpectedly onto the eighteenth-century literary scene as a provocateur whose works electrified readers. An autodidact who had not written anything of significance by age thirty, Rousseau seemed an unlikely candidate to become one of the most influential thinkers in history. Yet the power of his ideas is felt to this day in our political and social lives. In a masterly and definitive biography, Leo Damrosch traces the extraordinary life of Rousseau with novelistic verve. He presents Rousseau's books - The Social Contract, one of the greatest works on political theory; Emile, a groundbreaking treatise on education; and the Confessions, which created the genre of introspective autobiography - as works uncannily alive and provocative even today. Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers a vivid portrait of the visionary's tumultuous life.

Author Biography

LEO DAMROSCH was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, among other honors. Currently the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of literature at Harvard University, he has written widely on eighteenth-century writers. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Loneliness of a Gifted Child	p. 7
The End of Innocence	p. 25
""I Desired a Happiness of Which I Had No Idea""	p. 43
Rousseau Finds a Mother	p. 69
A Year of Wandering	p. 88
In Maman""s House	p. 104
The Idyll of Les Charmettes	p. 125
Broadening Horizons: Lyon and Paris	p. 149
The Masks of Venice	p. 168
A Life Partner and a Guilty Secret	p. 184
A Writer""s Apprenticeship	p. 196
The Beginnings of Fame	p. 211
Rousseau""s Originality	p. 234
Lionized in Gen
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