Rousseau, Anger, and the Writing Self. Patrick Coleman, PhD French and Francophone Studies University of California Los Angeles

Rousseau, Anger, and the Writing Self

Patrick Coleman, PhD
French and Francophone Studies
University of California Los Angeles
3:15pm, March 10, 2011
Garrison Hall 4.100

From classical times into the modern age, having one’s anger taken seriously was a privilege of rank. Yet, the ability to over-come anger was also a mark of prestige for those who already enjoyed social or cultural recognition. By claiming a right to in-dignation warranted by sensibility alone, and by dramatizing both that anger and its transcendence as a way to gain recogni-tion for the work of a writer of low social status, Rousseau marks a key turning-point in the cultural and literary history of the emotions.
Patrick Coleman, PhD
French and Francophone Studies
University of California Los Angeles
3:15pm, March 10, 2011
Garrison Hall 4.100

Patrick Coleman is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and is currently Associate Director of the UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies. His books include
Rousseau’s Political Imagination: Rule and Representation in the Lettre à d’Alembert (1984); Reparative Realism: Mourning and Modernity in the French Novel 1730‑1830 (1998); and Anger, Gratitude, and the
Enlightenment Writer (forthcoming 2011). Among his other works are
English-language editions of Rousseau’s Confessions and Discourse on
Inequality, and of Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe, as well as several co-edited volumes of critical essays.