Authors: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Peter France (Translator), Peter France
ISBN-13: 9780140443639, ISBN-10: 0140443630
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Date Published: February 1980
Edition: Reprint
The struggle between Rousseau's yearning for solitude and his need for society is the central theme of the Reveries.
In the two years before his death in 1778, Jean-Jacques Rousseau composed the ten meditations of Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Combining philosophical argument with amusing anecdotes and lyrical desriptive passages, they record the great French writer's sense of isolation and alienation from a world which he felt had rejected his work. As he wanders around Paris, gazing at plants and day-dreaming, Rousseau looks back over his life in order to justify his actions and to elaborate on his ideal of a well-structured society fit for the noble and solitary natural man.