The Backward Look: Memory and Writing Self in France 1580-1920

Goodden investigates the shifting relation between cognitive or scientific memory and emotional or spiritual recollection in various French writers from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The key period for discussion is the eighteenth century, where the interplay between memory and imagination and the link between self-knowledge and self-presentation are examined in a number of first-person narratives. The central chapters are devoted to the philosophical, scientific and fictional writings of Diderot and the novels and autobiographical work of Rousseau. (Legenda 2000)