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The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1784)

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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English (11)  Dutch (1)  All languages (12)
Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
Boring and after the spankings I couldn't bear to read anymore. ( )
  ElizaJane | May 10, 2013 |
The jacket explains that this book was revolutionary when it was published, but it didn't move me at all. I found him a bit of a whinger, somewhat unsympathetic and naieve. The opening section was interesting, exploring how his character had been shaped by experiences when young, but it fell awfuly flat in the middle and turned into a recitation of ills towards the end. ( )
  Helenliz | Apr 1, 2013 |
ebook version
  velvetink | Mar 31, 2013 |
It was radical at the time. It isn’t now. Now we can hardly stop public figures from stripping naked before us with autobiographies that are designed to shock and titillate. But when Rousseau wrote this he was doing something that hadn’t been done before: writing the truth about his youth.

This book’s one of those “important” books that anyone serious about literature can bore the backside off a bus with, one of those that makes you think the publishers of the 1001 series should have changed their “Must” to “Should.”

So, I didn’t really enjoy this a great deal but I did appreciate what he was trying to do. I was disappointed to read that it wasn’t published until after he’d died. That kind of defeats the object of a confession to me, particularly for those like the falsely accused servant girl who undoubtedly suffered for his own theft and wasn’t socially positioned to profit from selling the story as Rousseau did. Vive la Revolution! ( )
  arukiyomi | Jan 2, 2013 |
Read this in English Penguin edition when I was in my 20s and now in my late 40s I would like to go back and read it in the French original. At the time of the first reading, I had really very little idea of the milieu in which it was written. Now I have a bit deeper perspective on this period. It will probably make a lot more sense now.
Along with St. Augustine, Rousseau was promoted to me as one of the pioneers of the genre of autobiography, warts and all, as another reviewer of this book has put it.
Perhaps a third individual could be added, and maybe should be added, to this group: Benvenuto Cellini. I also have that book and have started but not finished it yet. When that is all done, maybe I could compare all three together.
  libraryhermit | Feb 28, 2010 |
Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (55 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Jean-Jacques Rousseauprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Cohen, J.M.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Glover, William SharpIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hedouin, EdmondTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mallory, W. ConynghamTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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First words
1712-1719 I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator.
Quotations
I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin on a ten-years task and to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
This is the complete, original Confessions, only combine with single volumes or complete sets, and not with individual volumes of multi-volumes versions, selection of excerpts, or study guides.
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 014044033X, Paperback)

Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, "The Confessions" is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his "Confessions" he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of "Emile". Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, "The Confessions" is a landmark work by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others.

(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:48:02 -0500)

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Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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