
Dans ces quatre premiers livres de ses Confessions, Rousseau raconte sa jeunesse, de sa naissance (1712) jusqu'à l'âge de 19 ans (1731). Il y retrace son enfance difficile à Genève - lui, le fils d'un modeste horloger, orphelin de mère - et sa fuite pour échapper à son milieu ; ses voyages ; enfin sa rencontre providentielle avec Mme de Warens, une femme plus âgée dont il tombe immédiatement amoureux. Ce sera pour lui une nouvelle naissance, et l'entrée dans l'âge adulte. Plus de trente ans après, Rousseau se penche sur Jean-Jacques. Il raconte ses chagrins d'enfant, ses joies d'adolescent, avoue ses petits larcins («j'ai donc été fripon»), revit ses premiers émois amoureux, replonge dans sa découverte éblouie de la lecture, qui le sauve de l'ennui («je ne choisissais point : je lisais tout avec une égale avidité»). Il fait, en somme, le bilan de son apprentissage de la vie. Dans cette extraordinaire quête d'une identité, véritable roman des origines, Rousseau se raconte, Rousseau se réinvente.
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1712–1778
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major Genevois philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. His novel, *Emile: or, On Education*, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, was of great importance to the development of pre-Romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau's autobiographical writings: his *Confessions*, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his *Reveries of a Solitary Walker* were among the pre-eminent examples of the late 18th-century movement known as the "Age of Sensibility", featuring an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection that has characterized the modern age. Rousseau also made important contributions to music as a theorist. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.<sup>[1][1]</sup> [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
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