TO BE AND TO WRITE: a study of Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract

This work presents an analysis of the book Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in order to verify how is manifested, in this inaugural writer of the French pre-Romanticism, a language and a worldview centered on egotism, on sensibility, on the taste for solitude and reverie. Through the investigation of a rhetoric of the self and some poetic images, we intend to raise some central elements of the poetic prose of Rousseau in the last of his works. Thus, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of the themes of the plot, solitude, reverie, happiness and memory for the recognition of the one who desires to know himself and to take joy in himself through the egotistical writing. By establishing himself through writing, the philosopher tries to duplicate his existence and to return to the times of lasting happiness which was previously experienced. To this end, this article is based on the reflections of Françoise Barguillet in Rousseau ou l’illusion passionnée, the theories of Michèle Grogiez in Solitude et Méditation and also the essays collected by Michel Coz and François Jacob in Rêveries sans fin.