Romanticism, Rousseau, Switzerland New Prospects

This collection brings together current research on topics that – separately and together – are perennially important to Romantic studies: the life and work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the landscape and history of his native Switzerland. Some of the essays re-orient Rousseau back to his Swiss context, while others address a Rousseauean Switzerland, a landscape indelibly coloured for writers and travellers by his presence. Among the authors discussed are Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Byron, Mary Shelley, James Boswell, Frances Brooke, Walter Scott, Felicia Hemans, and the Swiss cartoonist Rodolphe Töpffer. Topics include Rousseau's relevance to Romantic-era discoveries and debates on education, botany, automata, and suicide. Delving into Romanticism's engagement with Switzerland, these essays examine the rise of alpine and literary tourism, technologies of the picturesque, and representations and reconstructions of Swiss landscape in verbal and visual media.

Angela Esterhammer is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, Canada.
 
Diane Piccitto is Associate Lecturer in English at Plymouth University, UK.
 
Patrick Vincent is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
 
In 2012, they organized the twentieth annual North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Conference in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

List of Illustrations
Notes on the Contributors
1.Introduction; Patrick Vincent, Diane Piccitto, and Angela Esterhammer
2.Romantic Education, Concealment and Orchestrated Desire in Rousseau's Emile and Frances Brooke's Julia Mandeville; Enit K. Steiner
3.Romantic Suicide, Contagion, and Rousseau's Julie;Michelle Faubert
4.Seeing Jean-Jacques' Nature: Rousseau's Call for a Botanist Reader; Rachel Corkle
5.Rousseau's Pygmalion and Automata in the Romantic Period; Wendy C. Nielsen
6.Rousseau on the Tourist Trail; Nicola J. Watson
7.James Boswell and Rousseau in Môtiers: Re-inscribing Childhood and Its (Auto)biographical Prospects; Gordon Turnbull
8.Prints, Panoramas, and Picturesque Travel in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal of a Tour on the Continent; Pamela Buck
9.Visionary Republics: Virtual Representations of Switzerland and Wordsworth's Lake District; Patrick Vincent
10.A 'Melancholy Occurrence' in the Alps: Switzerland, Mont Blanc, and an Early Critique of Mountaineering; Simon Bainbridge
11.Manfred, Freedom, and the Swiss Alps: The Transformation of the Byronic Hero; Diane Piccitto
12.Legendary Late-Romantic Switzerlands: Baillie, Polidori, Hemans, and Scott; Angela Esterhammer
13.Rodolphe Töpffer's Earliest Comic Strips and The Tools of the Picturesque: Teaching the Art of Perception; Kirstyn Leuner
Index