Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Providence: An Interpretive Essay by Aubrey Rosenberg (review)

140 LETTERS IN CANADA 1989 Bartholomew, StPeter, and St Paul, that survive in four manuscripts and a fragment. Interestingly, each life has a long and a short form, the latter not unusual for larger compilations, which often had to reduce their narratives to a minimum to produce a single volume of manageable proportions. In this Anglo-Norman legendary, however, even the shorter version, taken from Paris, Bibliobiotheque Nationale, Ms fr.19525, is quite substantial. The longer version is edited principallyfrom London, British Library, MS Harley 2253 with additions from Paris, Arsenal, Ms 3516. Russell's introduction provides a brief but solid examination of the source, transmission, and relation to context of each life, with particular reference to the manuscript setting and to the relationship of the manuscripts to each other. A section on language, mostly morphology and syntax, follows. The texts themselves are edited in parallel versions on facing pages, a very effective layout where the number ofpages is kept even by introducing spaces in the text of the shorter version at points where no parallel in the longer version exists. Rejected readings and additions from the base manuscript are recorded and explained in the notes which also deal with points of translation. A selective glossary, which is especially useful because it records variant forms and verb paradigms, is added along with an Index of Proper Names. A further valuable addition is the printing of Latin texts typical of the source materials for the French, as there is no manuscript extant that appears to correspond to the Anglo-Norman legendary as it stands. Dated from before 1250, this is one of the earliest prose legendaries in French and it is gratifying to see it presented in such an excellent and attractive edition. (One unfortunate slip misspells the editor's name on thefront cover, butnoton the spine ortitle page.) The Legendierapostolique anglo-nonnand is the fifth volume in the series 'Etudes Medievales' directed by Pierre Boglioni of the Universite de Montreal and the first published from an author outside ofQuebec.Thisis a welcome testimony to the continuing importance of Montreal as a centre of medieval studies in this country. (BRIAN MERRILEES) Aubrey Rosenberg. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Providence: An Interpretive Essay English Series: Essays 14. Editions Naaman 1987. 128 This is an important book. In it Professor Rosenberg traces the evolution of Rousseau's concept of providence from his youth to old age. His conclusions are perceptive, fresh, and provocative. The traditional view maintains that Rousseau consistently held firm in his faith in God's beneficence and in his conviction that he would eventually be rewarded for his considerable anguish. With vigilant HUMANITIES 141 scepticism the author challenges this conventional interpretation of Rousseau's ideas. In so doing, he distinguishes between the public and the private man. Publicly, Rousseau proclaimed God's goodness for perhaps three reasons: in the early days he may well have believed in providence; later in his life he wished to protect his reputation; and like others in eighteenth-century France he believed such a notion essential for social order, dependent as it was on the compliance of the uneducated public. Privately, however, he was beset by grave doubts for a good part of his life, towards the end of which his incertitude proved to be a particular torment. It is this thesis especially which convincingly breaks new ground. Following an introduction, the body of the text is divided into four chapters. The first, entitled 'Election,' takes Rousseau from early and vague feelings that he had been marked in some special way to the later momentous illumination he experienced on the road to Vincennes which revealed that God had assigned to him the task of redeeming mankind. The following chapter, 'Mission,' covers approximately the next ten years during which he fulfilled his divine mandate by writing his most important works, infused with the confidence that he was God's agent on earth. The third chapter, 'Contradictions,' shows the serious and unsettling difficulties which he encountered in his interpretation of God, as seen in a series of inconsistencies to which he was driven in an attempt to render man alone accountable for the evil in the world. Finally...