(RE)DISCOVERING THE SELF: spectacular games in narcisse or l’amant de lui-même by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract

In Narcisse or L’Amant de lui-même, Rousseau’s comedy written in 1752, we can read the following dialogue: “Valère, considérant le portrait : Mon coeur n’y résiste pas [...] Quoi, ne pourrai-je découvrir d’où vient ce portrait ? Le mystère et la difficulté irritent mon empressement. Car je te l’avoue, j’en suis très réellement épris. Frontin, à part : La chose est impayable ! Le voilà amoureux de lui-même.” The passage is paradigmatic from a thematic bias to guide the entire play: in a general meaning, it considers the representation of the self as a representation in representation, that is, by the power of the simulacrum; in a more accurate sense, it would operate such representation through the idea of the self as a captive image of the self - in the case of Narcisse obscured - by his own look. By accepting this reason, textually and scenographically worked by this double articulation, the aim of this paper is to verify the ways by which Rousseau represents a dialectic of the image and look, trying to recognize the stratagems built by the style - portrait - and by the disguising games that take the reader/viewer - such as Valère, the protagonist of the comedy - trough the ways of (self)knowledge, re-cognition, similarity and dissimilarity.