Original scientific paper

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dramatization of the Self

Martina Domines Veliki orcid.org/0000-0002-3785-7177 ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

Though not the first writer of autobiography in the European literary tradition, Jean-
Jacques Rousseau ushered in a new model of secular autobiography in a desperate
search for ‘a stabilizing wholeness for the self’ (Anderson). Instead of turning to God
as the ultimate arbiter of truth he turned to himself and to his audience. All the works
in his autobiographical trilogy violate the conventions of the autobiographical genre
and by the same token relate to the tradition of the genre (de Man). In The Confessions,
the first work in his trilogy, the question of deceit places itself at the heart of his project
and the reader is entangled in the interplay of truth and lie. The Dialogues plays with
the multiplications of ‘the self’ and openly shows the author’s fictionalizations of ‘the
self’, warning us against any facile assumption of transparent autobiographical writing.
The last work in the trilogy, Reveries of A Solitary Walker, shows Rousseau still asking the
initial question ‘What am I?’, without any possibility of achieving a satisfying answer.
This dead end of his autobiographical project happens paradoxically because Rousseau
has to use language to express his self and he remains irremediably split in and
by language. His autobiographical texts aspire to truth but truth remains secondary to
staging the drama of the self. The textual ‘I’ seeks out excuses to perform itself and the
text generates guilt in order to justify the excuse (de Man). Autobiography remains a
privileged form for Rousseau because it offers the possibility of fixing oneself through
writing, the possibility later explored by the writers of the Romantic period.

Keywords

autobiography; dramatization of self; truth vs. lie; author vs. reader; past and present selves; ambivalent character of language

Hrčak ID:

61580

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/61580

Publication date:

15.4.2010.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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