Description
Book SynopsisReevaluates Jean-Jacques Rousseau through the lens of music theory to question his contribution to thinking about music as an aesthetic force in social life. Links Rousseau's understanding of concepts in music to the problem of the individual's relationship to the social order.
Trade Review“The research in Rousseau Among the Moderns is excellent. The book is clearly written and deploys an interesting and puckish sense of relation to present-day music. It is an important contribution to Rousseau scholarship and brings together a lot of material that has been published in very different venues.”
—Tracy B. Strong,Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego
“Julia Simon's Rousseau Among the Moderns is a fabulous book that adds something new and important to the field of Rousseau studies. In the past two decades or so, a number of studies have attempted to bridge a long-standing critical gulf between Rousseau's literary works and his social theory, Simon's included. But hers is perhaps the first study to integrate what are already interdisciplinary readings of works such as The Social Contract, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, and Julie with Rousseau's considerable writing about music.”
—Patrick Riley,Colgate University
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Text
Introduction
1 Performance, Rhythm, and the Constitution of Community
2 Singing Democracy: Music and Politics
3 Rameau and Rousseau on Absolute and Relative Value: The Theory/Practice Problem
4 Folk Music: Authenticity, Primitivism, and the Uses of Roots Music
5 Rousseau and Aesthetic Modernity: Music’s Power of Redemption
Conclusion: Rousseau Sings the Blues
Notes
Bibliography
Index
