自己をめぐる思考 : 18世紀英国の知的情況と近代的自伝の誕生再考  [in Japanese] Thinking about the Self : Reconsideration of Eighteenth-Century England's Intellectual Situations with the Birth of Modern Autobiography  [in Japanese]

Rousseau's The Confessions (1782) and Wordsworth's The Prelude (1799,1805,1850) are regarded as the first examples of modern autobiography. Each of them tried to recognize his own identity through writing on his personal history. And it is here the modernity of the genre rests. Around the end of the eighteenth century, autobiography, having once been an author's means of self-defence or self-praise, became to function as a linguistic mode of searching for one's true self. Thus, this general understanding shows that there was no relationship between the birth of a modern or Romantic version of the genre and the various eighteenth-century intellectuals. Yet, it is a rather pointless statement, when reexamined with special attention to the motives and expectations for writing held by the two Romantic autobiographers, Rousseau and Wordsworth, in the context of intellectual situations of the century. In their minds, there is another intent in autobiographical activity, which is to reestablish themselves as social beings. By representing the true self, Rousseau sought to erase the world's misunderstanding of himself, and eventually reconstitute his relationship with other people. Similarly Wordsworth's other purpose is to confirm that he should be a social poet who can reflect philosophically also on the society. And it is their responsiveness to the significance of the , sociality in the self that thoroughly corresponds to the mentality which permeated the eighteenth-century thinking about the self. At that time, in both philosophical and literary fields. The self could not be considered as a self-sufficient single entity, and in the real world, people were made to behave socially through either exercising the sympathetic feeling or remaining silent in their own places in the social hierarchy. This mentality of the century is important for the two Romantics in another respect. Their discovery of the self as the one and only field for the reflection of identity would have been impossible without the mentality which had in fact worked for them as an epistemological means. Thus, modern or Romantic autobiography can not be said to have appeared after the disappearance of the previous age's milieu. It is under the formative influence of the eighteenth-century intellectual situations that the genre could newly emerge.

Rousseau's The Confessions (1782) and Wordsworth's The Prelude (1799,1805,1850) are regarded as the first examples of modern autobiography. Each of them tried to recognize his own identity through writing on his personal history. And it is here the modernity of the genre rests. Around the end of the eighteenth century, autobiography, having once been an author's means of self-defence or self-praise, became to function as a linguistic mode of searching for one's true self. Thus, this general understanding shows that there was no relationship between the birth of a modern or Romantic version of the genre and the various eighteenth-century intellectuals. Yet, it is a rather pointless statement, when reexamined with special attention to the motives and expectations for writing held by the two Romantic autobiographers, Rousseau and Wordsworth, in the context of intellectual situations of the century. In their minds, there is another intent in autobiographical activity, which is to reestablish themselves as social beings. By representing the true self, Rousseau sought to erase the world's misunderstanding of himself, and eventually reconstitute his relationship with other people. Similarly Wordsworth's other purpose is to confirm that he should be a social poet who can reflect philosophically also on the society. And it is their responsiveness to the significance of the , sociality in the self that thoroughly corresponds to the mentality which permeated the eighteenth-century thinking about the self. At that time, in both philosophical and literary fields. The self could not be considered as a self-sufficient single entity, and in the real world, people were made to behave socially through either exercising the sympathetic feeling or remaining silent in their own places in the social hierarchy. This mentality of the century is important for the two Romantics in another respect. Their discovery of the self as the one and only field for the reflection of identity would have been impossible without the mentality which had in fact worked for them as an epistemological means. Thus, modern or Romantic autobiography can not be said to have appeared after the disappearance of the previous age's milieu. It is under the formative influence of the eighteenth-century intellectual situations that the genre could newly emerge.