Table Of ContentJulie, Or, The New Heloise : Letters of Two
title: Lovers Who Live in a Small Town At the
Foot of the Alps Works
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.; Stewart, Philip.;
author:
Vachâe, Jean.
publisher: University Press of New England
isbn10 | asin: 0874518253
print isbn13: 9780874518252
ebook isbn13: 9780585231617
language: English
subject
publication date: 1997
lcc: PQ2034.A3 1990 vol. 6eb
ddc: 848/.509 s
subject:
Page iii
Julie, or the New Heloise
Letters of Two Lovers who Live in a Small Town at the
Foot of the Alps
THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF ROUSSEAU
Vol.6
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Translated and Annotated by
Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché
Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly,
Series Editors
Dartmouth College
Published by University Press of New England
Hanover and London
Page iv
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
(c) 1997 by the Trustees of Dartmouth College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1
CIP data appear at the end of the book
This publication has received support from Pro Helvetia and the
Florence Gould Foundation.
Page v
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction ix
Note on the Translation xxvii
Notes on the Text and Engravings xxxi
Julie, or the New Heloise 1
Preface 3
Preface of the New Heloise or Conversation about 5
Novels between the Editor and a Man of Letters
Part One 25
Part Two 155
Part Three 252
Part Four 327
Part Five 429
Part Six 523
Appendixes
I. The Loves of Milord Edward Bomston 613
II. Subjects of the Engravings 621
III. Narrative Chronology 629
IV. Glossary 631
V. Table of the Letters and Their Contents 634
VI. Bibliography 649
Editions in French 649
Editions in English 650
Studies in English 650
Editors' Notes 653
Index 725
Page vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Original half-title of Julie xxiii
Original title pages of Julie xxv
Map of the Vaud Country and surrounding Region 23
1. Love's first kiss 53
2. The heroism of valor 134
3. Ah, young Man! to your Benefactor! 179
4. Shame and remorse avenge love profaned 243
5. The inoculation of love 273
6. Paternal force 287
7. The confidence of beautiful souls 346
8. Monuments of bygone love 426
9. Morning in the English manner 458
10. Whither wilst thou flee? The Phantom is in thine 504
heart
11. Claire, Claire! Children sing at night when they are 528
afraid
12. [Untitled] 605
Page ix
INTRODUCTION
After the tragic passions that characterized the novels of Mme de
Lafayette in the late seventeenth century and Antoine Prévost in the
1730s and 1740s, many of the most prominent works in France by the
mid-eighteenth century were quintessentially Parisian, featuring wit
and elegance. In them love typically took the form of successive,
often furtive affairs. Rousseau's novel, unlike those of much-read
contemporaries such as Marivaux, Duclos, and Crébillon, had its
source in an intense need for genuine sentiment and a profound
conviction that there exist natural values yet uncorrupted in some
remote places. Sentiment was already the newest vogue in the theatre,
with the success of comédie larmoyante (tearful comedy) in the
1740s, soon leading to "serious comedy" or "bourgeois tragedy" in the
late 1750s; but Rousseau had no confidence in the efficacy of a brief
spate of superficial emotion produced in such an artificial and morally
compromised place as the theatre: this he makes quite clear in the
Letter to M. d'Alembert. The idea of spinning a long novel around
such ostensibly unlikely material was doubtless inspired in large part
by Richardson, but the feelings and opinions are Rousseau's own and
derive from those elaborated in his early works. And what he did with
them was going to affect profoundly the esthetic sensibilities of
generations to come, besides reinforcing his social and political
theories in ways that would permanently frame discourse about
individuality, social organization, political power, and social control.
As he relates in his Confessions, Rousseau had planned to write a
systematic treatise (which he eventually abandoned) called La Morale
sensitive, ou le matérialisme du Sage,
1 in which he would have worked out the relationships between
physical environment, feeling, and morality. It never took focus,
which is not surprising because materialism was fundamentally
inimical to Rousseau, and much of its unfulfilled energy may well
have gone into Julie. Nevertheless, at the outset Julie was not
essentially an intellectual undertaking although it was certainly an
ideological one. It was born of love and emotion; the characters and
setting came before the plot, which gradually took shape as they wrote
to each other (Collected Writings, V. 361-362). Their purity of soul
was of a piece with the idyllic nature of the Swiss landscape. Virtue
itself is not a gift of nature: it requires will, it is a kind of
Page x
heroism that overcomes obstacles; but one can be unspoiled in places
where city vice has not yet penetrated, and thus be inclined to love
virtue. A small group of characters is animated by a mutual assurance
that they possess like values and cannot go wrong placing full faith in
each other. In many ways the key to this underlying conviction is
simplicity: just as unadorned melody is the clearest expression of the
soul, rustic ways, uncluttered thoughts, honest morality, and pure
sentiments all imply each other. These are the real subject of Julie,
and this explains why Rousseau takes such pains in his prefaces to
explain what kind of reader he can hope to move; for he insisted his
novel was to be read, as it was written, with the heart.
When he began Julie Rousseau was already well known for his two
Discourses and musical works; during its writing he became even
more so for his Letter to M. d'Alembert. The existence of this
paradoxical and unorthodox novel by a man known for denouncing
worldly culture was much bruited about in the two years separating its
essential completion from its release in February of 1761. Rousseau
evokes in his Confessions the keen air of expectancy with which it
was awaited: "All of Paris was impatient to see this novel; the
booksellers of the rue St. Jacques and at the Palais Royal were
besieged by people who were asking for news about it."
2 It was snatched up and read avidly; one anecdote told by Rousseau
helps to capture a general need this book seemed to answer:
It was published at the beginning of Carnival. The peddler brought it to
Madame the Princesse de Talmont one day when there was a ball at the
Opera.3 After supping she had herself dressed to go to it, and she began to
read the new Novel while awaiting the time. At midnight she ordered them
to get the horses ready and continued to read. They came to tell her that
her horses were ready; she gave no answer. Seeing that she was losing
track of time, her servants came to notify her that it was two o'clock. There
