Rousseau, Werther, and the argument about reading

Use in the book

The Défense excerpt in the Preface names Rousseau as the first to introduce disastrous reveries among French readers and says Werther developed this poisonous germ (p. 13). The rhetoric constructs a genealogy of a modern vice: withdrawal from others, surrender to dreams, and the belief that living indefinitely can itself be beautiful. These are accusations advanced by Chateaubriand’s apologetic argument. A lexicon should not restate them as a neutral history of Rousseau’s thought or as an empirically established causal account of readers’ actions.

The charge also creates a difficulty for René’s own fiction. Its sensuous landscapes, moving self-disclosures, and beautiful language make the criticized mode of feeling exceptionally attractive. The author’s answer is to distinguish the final impression of a work from isolated seductive passages and to direct the story toward correction and punishment. The 1805 reviewer takes up precisely this issue, acknowledging that the descriptions may be dangerously intoxicating while defending their governing moral effect.

The earlier Mercure article, dated in the edition to May 1802, already names Werther and Rousseau and identifies the missionary’s rebuke as the work’s corrective (Review p. 353). This matters for the chronology of interpretation: a moralizing reading was available close to initial publication, not only after the separate 1805 edition. At the same time, the fuller 1802 chapter also traced indefinite longing partly to Christianity and monastic life. The two explanatory directions coexist in the documentary record.

Neither comparison establishes that René is a simple copy of Werther or a transparent fictional portrait of Rousseau. The shared issue is what readers do with literary representations of exceptional inwardness. Do they imitate withdrawal, recognize its danger, or experience both attraction and resistance? The supplied reviews show contemporaries negotiating that question rather than eliminating it. Reading the names as polemical coordinates preserves their importance without making unsupported claims about direct borrowing, authorial psychology, or a single uncontested origin of modern melancholy.

Places to read

1. Preface p. 13C'est J.-J. Rousseau qui introduisit le premier parmi nous ces rêveries — An accusatory genealogy stated by the author’s Défense.
2. Preface p. 13Le roman de Werther a développé depuis ce germe de poison — The metaphor makes alleged influence a moral danger.
3. Review p. 353ces nombreuses victimes de l'exemple du jeune Werther, de Rousseau — The early review already shares the anti-imitation argument.
4. Review p. 356trop enivrant pour l'âge des illusions — The later reviewer acknowledges the possible seductiveness of the remedy itself.

Translation in this edition

The edition identifies the first review’s Republican-calendar date as 5 May 1802 and the second as 20 July 1805. These dates locate the printed responses; they do not establish detailed influence histories beyond the supplied evidence.