The backward look

About this book

"Theories of memory and fictional recreations of the remembering mind have occupied a central place in French literature since Montaigne. Goodden investigates the shifting relation between cognitive or 'scientific' memory and emotional or spiritual recollection in a series of major writers from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Her study focuses on the eighteenth century, where the interplay between memory and imagination and the link between self-knowledge and self-presentation are shown to be exceptionally fertile." "The philosophical, scientific and fictional writings of Diderot and the novels and autobiographical works of Rousseau are central to this ground-breaking work, which will be of interest to all readers concerned with the specificity of the French literary tradition."--BOOK JACKET.