Reframing Rousseau: Art, Literature and Attachment in Émile

Abstract

This article sheds light on both Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s aesthetic thought and his role in the emergence of modern ideas of littérature, by revisiting his novel-cum-treatise, Émile, ou de l’éducation (1762). Contrary to much scholarship that has minimized Rousseau’s interest in aesthetics, and in the visual arts in particular, the article reframes Rousseau as a fundamentally aesthetic thinker. With reference to Jacques Derrida’s concept (via Kant) of the parergon, it argues that Rousseau uses the image of the frame – literal or figurative – to delineate his ideas about the ideal visual and literary arts, and how they should affect spectators or readers. By reading Rousseau alongside Rita Felski, the article historicizes the affective turn in postcritique today. Focusing on Émile’s encounters with the literary arts, it shows that the modern idea of literature as aesthetically pleasing texts that (by dint of their aesthetic quality) induce an affective and ethical response, was attached to the French word littérature earlier than has been claimed, by an author often considered ‘anti-literature’.