’The Confessions’ is a kind of synthesis of an autobiography and a novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.They were written between 1765 and 1769 in an effort to react to the persecutions that Rousseau suffered even at the hands of former friends.
’The Confessions’ are divided chronologically into two parts. The first (
books I-VI), which follows the formative years of the philosopher, is the most accessible and most often studied. Although much of what he has to tell is embarrassing, Rousseau seems to delight in dwelling on the pleasure that he felt in being spanked by the Mlle Lambercier, the sister of the pastor to whom his early education had been confided…
Rousseau continues to describe his life and eventually reaches adulthood. The narrative continues in a similar vein in the later sections of the second part (
books VII-XII), with Rousseau focusing less on places traveled and jobs held than on his personal trials, unrequited loves, and sexual frustrations. He speaks at length of his significant relations with women, including his rather unremarkable longtime companion Thérése le Vasseur and the older matron Madame de Warens, at whose home he often stayed as a young man.
In the last of the twelve books that make up the work, Rousseau speaks about his intellectual work, his writing, and his relations to contemporary philosophers. Rousseau concludes ’The Confessions’ when he is fifty-three. At this point, all his major philosophical works have been published, and his fears of persecution are growing.
In ’The Confessions’, Rousseau claims to be absolutely honest, to hold back nothing of the “truth of nature.’ He feels he is different from all other people, and it is the value of this difference that he desires his reader to judge.
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