Question

Evaluate Rousseau’s use of the “confessional narrative” in his work, Confessions. What impact (both positive and negative) did it have on his message? Your answer should be at least 100 words.

Answer 1

First of all, let's take a look into confessional narrative. Confession is a first-person narrative that presents the reader with a deeply personal account of the author's life. It's usually full of adventures, anecdotes, mischiefs, and all the lessons the author drew (or failed to draw) from them. The word, of course, springs from Christian theology where a believer needs to confess his or her sins in order to be forgiven. However, Rousseau has revolutionized the genre by secularizing it (getting rid of its religious context and purpose) and opening it up for worldly topics and angles.

Step-by-step explanation:

Rousseau's confessional narrative functions in two ways:

1. It is supposed to work as a personal account and self-appraisal that the author declares before his readers and God himself. The author hopes to educate and instruct his readers so as not to make the same mistakes like he did.
2. It is also supposed to present the 18th-century audience with an authentic, unadulterated, even controversial way of living life and doing things. He doesn't shy away from talking about his various misdeeds and depravities. On the contrary, he recounts at length his adulteries, dishonesties, embarrassments. In Rousseau's own words: "Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man." By being so honest and even brazen, Rousseau is trying to establish a bond of trust and sympathy with his readers.

There are the "positive" and "negative" impacts of his message. The former are in line with the conventions of the genre. The latter present Rousseau as one of us - a man full of virtues and sins, strengths and weaknesses, yet courageous enough to admit both, and worthy of respect because of it.