L’image de soi dans les « autographies » de Rousseau

Abstract

In his “autographies”, Rousseau repeats his claim in the defense of his self image, using all three of Aristotle's speech genres—the epidictic, the judicial, and the deliberative types. His way to address the reader and the discursive and textual patterns, borrowed from the rhetorical tradition, endow him with an apparent ethos of orator: the exemplum in the Confessions, the elenchos in the Dialogues and the disputatio in the Rêveries all contribute to the appearance of the philosopher in accordance with public expectations. This apparent ethos is superimposed by the represented ethos. An analogy between oratory types and literary types became fundamental in the classical age; so, apart from Aristotle's Rhetoric, Rousseau draws upon his Poetics as well as Batteux’ Principles of literature in order to create a positive ethos under an epic, dramatic and serene form. In a dialogic approach, autographies can be viewed as answers to contemporary judgments. So, the author Rousseau is faced with the necessity to take into account an a priori ethos in order to avoid being discredited. Thus, the self image he unfolds in his autographies as a secluded philosopher is in opposition to the perfectly cultivated man he is, who frequently moves in higher circles, because, in an editorial perspective, he must appear as a “philosopher”, independent of history and circumstances. To clarify the persuasive effects the discursive ethos exerts upon the reader of Rousseau’s autographies, I show that the actual ethos comes from varied ethè which are linked in different discursive forms: the orator’s ethos, the philosopher’s ethos as staged by the speaker, the ethos of the author stemming from these obviously contradictory ethè (which the Dialogues explain), the ethos of the philosopher as it is perceived in the way he writes the text (of which alone the Rêveries are representative). By differentiating the apparent ethos from the represented ethos, I show that Rousseau’s autographies constitute a means of positioning in Bourdieu’s sense (of taking a stand in the field) and that the apparent ethos of the philosopher of the Rêveries, by completing the represented ethos of the first two autographies, reflects a progress in a project of self-promotion. The third autography of Rousseau, while claiming to act as a work of art, is the most accomplished.

Keywords

• autobiography
• autography
• discursive community
• discours analysis
• ethos
• genre