Description
Book SynopsisRomanticism and Civilization examines romantic alternatives to modern life in Rousseau's foundational novel Julie. It argues that Julie is a response to the ills of modern civilization, and that Rousseau saw that the Enlightenment's combination of science and of democracy degraded human life by making it bourgeois. The bourgeois is man uprooted by science and attached to nothing but himself. He lives a commercial life and his materialism and calculations penetrate all aspects of his existence. He is neither citizen, nor family man, nor lover in any serious sense: his life is meaningless. Rousseau's romanticism in Julie is an attempt to find connectedness through the sentiments of private life and wholeness through love, marriage, and family.
Trade ReviewIn Romanticism and Civilization, [there] is a reader and imitator of Richardson and Prévost, a would-be stoic and Platonist, a novelist wise enough to separate his novel from politics, and a writer who manages to synchronize the conservative values of Christian piety, aristocratic honor, and patriarchal authority in Julie. * European Romantic Review *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 The Bourgeois, Nature, and Civic Virtue: Sexual Relations in Three Societies Chapter 2 Rousseau's Romantic Reform of Christian Piety, Aristocratic Honor, and Patriarchal Authority Chapter 3 Rousseau's Romantic Alternatives: Love and Family
