Jean-Jacques Rousseau: la tension et le rythme par Arnaud Tripet (review)

Reviews 239 introduction is undertheorized, subsequent chapters build on Bourdieu’s claim that cultural products emerge, and derive their symbolic value, from particular sociohistorical contexts.Producers of literature include not only authors but also ghostwriters, editors, publishers, book reviewers, and/or literary prize panels—for the impact that the latter have had on reader perception and the novel’s success. In each of the two parts of Steemers’s study, a brief introduction defining the prevailing Zeitgeist is followed by two chapters contrasting a bestseller playing to the reading public’s desire for the exotic and authentic—L’enfant noir for its content and Les soleils des indépendances for its style—with an iconoclastic novel whose anti-colonial rhetoric (Le pauvre Christ de Bomba) or suspect authorship (Le devoir de violence) discomforted readers and discouraged promotion. Authors’ trajectories are seemingly secondary (ample references to Adèle King’s Rereading Camara Laye and Christopher Wise’s biography of Yambo Ouologuem, for example, fill this gap) to the analysis of the publishers’history, ideological leaning and financial objectives. Steemers gives insights into the politics of publishing, revealing for instance that Plon, with its history of supporting the Catholic right and publishing for short-term gains, underwrote L’enfant noir because it promoted the universal values of France’s civilizing mission, while Mongo Beti’s corrosive critique of Catholic colonial missionaries left him the option of a peripheral if Paris-based publisher, Présence Africaine, a fledgling concern in 1956 under the direction of Senegalese writer and politician, Alioune Diop. Steemers’s research into the initial reception by press reviewers and book prize judges and how their relationship to publishing houses with vested interests and their own ideological positions inform their critiques adds to the interest of this rendering of the ‘backstory ’ of mid-century African literature. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Judith E. Preckshot Tripet, Arnaud. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: la tension et le rythme. Paris: Garnier, 2012. ISBN 987-2-8124-0777-2. Pp. 184. 19 a. Tripet presents an insightful and readable study of characteristic themes that pervade all of Rousseau’s works. He discerns tensions between contrasting but reconcilable principles in Rousseau’s thought. The two Discours describe the loss of innocence and happiness in humanity as societies developed. The Contrat social, on the other hand, seeks to formulate an ideal society where such happiness and virtue can be preserved. While the latter work focuses on the human collectivity, Émile attempts to protect the same values in the individual. In the Confessions and Rêveries, Rousseau speaks about himself as the exemplification of his ideals rather than theorizing in general terms. The unifying principle in all these works is the idea of the loss and regaining of our natural purity and happiness. Rousseau in his own life went through the same stages that humanity as a whole did in its history. The greatest threats to one’s personal integrity are time and other people. The most perfect fulfillment is to be found in a timeless state where one becomes sufficient unto oneself, when one transcends the obstacles represented by the encroachments of temporality and the corrupting influence of others. Such a happiness was known by Rousseau in his childhood, during the years he spent with Madame de Warens, and on the island of Saint-Pierre in the Lac de Bienne. Memory is the binding force that insures the unity of self through the different stages of life. Moreover, it is in the inner self, in one’s individual conscience that a person comes to know God. Another theme explored by Tripet is that of love in Rousseau’s writings. Tripet emphasizes the influence of the death of Rousseau’s mother at the time of his birth on his relationship with women. He was constantly in pursuit of a maternal figure, and his erotic drives often became confused with filial sentiments. He developed a neo-courtly ideal of unconsummated love as the most noble and satisfying form of this experience. The greatest fulfillment lies in the unfulfilled. In his autobiographical writings, Rousseau presents a number of examples, like his Platonic relationship with Sophie d’Houdetot. In La Nouvelle Hélo...