Following his opposition to the establishment of a theatre in Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often considered an enemy of the stage. Yet he was fascinated by drama: he was a keen theatre-goer, his earliest writings were operas and comedies, his admiration for Italian lyric theatre ran through his career, he wrote one of the most successful operas of the day, Le Devin du village, and with his Pygmalion, he invented a new theatrical genre, the Scene lyrique ('melodrama'). Through multi-faceted analyses of Rousseau's theatrical and musical works, authors re-evaluate his practical and theoretical involvement with and influence on the dramatic arts, as well as his presence in modern theatre histories. New readings of the Lettre a d'Alembert highlight its political underpinnings, positioning it as an act of resistance to external bourgeois domination of Geneva's cultural sphere, and demonstrate the work's influence on theatrical reform after Rousseau's death. Fresh analyses of his theory of voice, developed in the Essai sur l'origine des langues, highlight the unique prestige of Italian opera for Rousseau. His ambition to rethink the nature and function of stage works, seen in Le Devin du village and then, more radically, in Pygmalion, give rise to several different discussions in the volume, as do his complex relations with Gluck. Together, contributors shed new light on the writer's relationship to the stage, and argue for a more nuanced approach to his theatrical and operatic works, theories and legacy.

On ne peut penser les Lumieres sans l'auteur du Contrat social et l'Emile, mais on ne saurait cependant nier que Rousseau denonce les 'philosophes modernes' dans les termes les plus forts. Comment donc penser les rapports entre Rousseau et les philosophes? Dans ce volume les specialistes de Rousseau vont au-dela des oppositions figees. Ils montrent comment le 'citoyen de Geneve', a partir de sources philosophiques partagees avec ses contemporains, delimite le champ de la raison et construit une pensee politique rigoureuse, s'imposant ainsi a ceux qui souvent rejettent ses idees religieuses ou sa denonciation des sciences et des arts. Confrontant la richesse irreductible de ses ecrits, les auteurs proposent le portrait intellectuel d'un homme qui construit sa pensee a la fois avec et contre les philosophes, les obligeant a justifier ou a modifier leurs propres convictions face au defi que represente son oeuvre. Figure emblematique de son siecle, Rousseau suscite l'indignation mais oblige aussi a des reexamens difficiles. C'est par l'etude de cette position a la fois centrale et marginale que l'on peut saisir la force de sa pensee et discerner ce qu'elle signifie pour nous.

Ne en 1712, Jean-Jacques Rousseau ne cesse de nous interpeller: depuis cinquante ans, l'etude de son oeuvre s'est diversifiee et renouvelee de facon remarquable. Dans ce recueil, treize specialistes de Rousseau, venus d'horizons disciplinaires divers, presentent leur reflexion la plus recente, tantot en revenant sur un ecrit fondamental de l'auteur, tantot en eclairant des aspects peu connus de son oeuvre, tantot en proposant une interpretation d'ensemble de son parcours exceptionnel. Rousseau et l'amitie, Rousseau copiste de musique, Rousseau et l'opinion publique, la difficile appropriation du premier tome des Confessions par les partisans du philosophe: les sujets abordes sont d'une grande richesse. Le volume offre au lecteur une serie de nouvelles perspectives sur un auteur et un oeuvre inepuisables. A l'oree de l'annee Rousseau 2012, il interessera tous ceux qui veulent connaitre les dernieres evolutions de la critique, qu'ils soient litteraires, philosophes ou musicologues. Le nom de Jean-Jacques Rousseau vit encore.

At a moment when nationalism is resurgent and stubbornly refuses to obey past predictions of its imminent demise, a scholarly return to the inaugurating eighteenth-century debates about nationalism, nations and the nation state seems not only desirable but necessary. This collection of essays surveys the issues under eight headings, with the French Revolution as a recurring reference point – not least because of the tension within the Revolution between national interests and universal aspirations, a tension that arguably continues to beset modern ideas of the nation. The volume offers a broad survey of current thinking on the eighteenth-century nation and the emerging nationalisms of the age. Clusters of essays provide extended treatment of the certain major topics, while others give unexpected sidelights involving figures as diverse as John Toland (Irish philosopher) and Brillat-Savarin (French gastronome and cosmopolitan nationalist). All combine to provide a clear focus on an area of eighteenth-century studies of continuing relevance to the modern reader in Europe and beyond.