Rousseau's Hand: The Crafting of a Writer

247 Pages·2013·1.056 MB·English

by  Angelica A. Goodden

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
ROUSSEAU’S HAND
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
Rousseau’s Hand

Th e Crafting of a Writer
ANGELICA GOODDEN
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Angelica Goodden 2013
Th e moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 978–0–19–968383–3
As printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and the Faculty of
M edieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford for grant-
ing the term of sabbatical leave during which I was able to start work on
this book; to the two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press,
whose comments on my original typescript were exceptionally helpful;
to my former students Joe Smith and Hannah Wroblewski for helping
me with typing when time was especially pressing, as well as to all the
other students at Oxford with whom I have been able to study and dis-
cuss R ousseau over the years; and for everyone in the editorial and pro-
duction teams of Oxford University Press for their effi ciency and
forebearance.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
Contents

Introduction 1
1. Th e Business of Making 23
2. Writing (Down) Music 4 9
3. Art or Craft? 7 1
4. Drama and Life 91
5. Emile , Wealth and Wellbeing 1 17
6. Crafting a Self 1 43
7. Th e Order of Insight 163
Conclusion 189
Bibliography 203
Index 217
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/2013, SPi
Introduction
BOOK AND HAND
‘Les habitans du monde enchanté font generalement peu de livres, et ne
s’arrangent point pour en faire; ce n’est jamais un métier pour eux.’1
Rousseau had a theory about proper writing that condemned its opposite.
Wordsmiths and pen-pushers, 2 so he thought, led disenchanted lives,
their eff orts drudgery, their making books as diff erent from writing them
as craft from art, or chalk from cheese. Th e work that really counted came
from sudden revelation, like the vital moment in 1749 that showed Rous-
seau what he had to say to save mankind (or at least to win the Dijon
essay prize), an instant causing ‘eff ervescence’ 3 of the heart and mind that
laid bare truths which simply had to be expressed. In more normal cir-
cumstances wordlessness seemed preferable.
So when his books were banned and burnt Rousseau kept himself in
other ways, mostly as a scribe who copied scores for music lovers, not an
author setting down infl ammatory thoughts. He would, no doubt, have
written more but for the censoring of E mile and D u contrat social and the
persecution they invited; we hardly think of him as wordless, though, this
author of confessions, essays, novels, treatises, and plays: they said the
things he had to say, and so he said them, then withdrew. If wordsmiths
in that fertile age wrote endlessly, they never changed the world as Rous-
seau did. Yet after writing he went back to doing what he said he always
should have done, working as a craftsman in the little world of those who
make things patiently by hand.
For his were still a maker’s times, although they ushered in an age of
manufacture where technology and automation would replace the older,
1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dialogues (Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques) , in Œuvres complètes
(henceforth O .C. ), ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols. (Paris: Gallimard,
1959–95), I.672–3. All references to Rousseau’s works are to this edition.
2 Or ‘livriers’ (Rousseau’s coinage), those who write professionally for money ( Dialogues ,
I.840). We might liken them to Mercier’s ‘écrivailleurs’ and even to Voltaire’s ‘canaille’.
3 O.C. , I.673.