Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, ou de l'education [Emile]

Laurence Mall (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Ed. by Tim Unwin, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.04: French Writing and Culture: Eighteenth-Century and the Enlightenment, 1700-1800.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge), Síofra Pierse (University College Dublin), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Education

Dates

First circulation or publication 1762

Places

Switzerland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction

Resources

The Genevan philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) considered Emile or On Education, composed in the 1750s and published in 1762, as “the best of [his] writings, as well as the most important” (Rousseau, 1995, p. 480). It ranks among the great works concerning the philosophy of education, regularly grouped with such classics as Plato’s Republic and John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). But this masterpiece is also an influential work in other disciplines: it is a study in philosophical anthropology, a significant piece of social criticism, as well as a very strange quasi-novel. Its influence was considerable, and it continues to offer stimulating intellectual challenges to …

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2879 words

Citation: Mall, Laurence. "Émile, ou de l'education". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 September 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5382, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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