6.8 /10 1 Votes
Country France Publication date 1761 Originally published 1761 Genre Epistolary novel | 3.4/5 Goodreads Language French Media type Print Publisher Marc-Michel Rey | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Original title Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse Similar Works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Epistolary novel books, Classical Studies books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Julie, or the New Heloise (French: Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse) is an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761 by Marc-Michel Rey in Amsterdam. The original edition was entitled Lettres de deux amans habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes ("Letters from two lovers living in a small town at the foot of the Alps").
The novel's subtitle points to the history of Héloïse d'Argenteuil and Peter Abelard, a medieval story of passion and Christian renunciation. The novel was put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
Although Rousseau wrote it as a novel, a philosophical theory about authenticity permeates through it, as he explores autonomy and authenticity as moral values. A common interpretation is that Rousseau valued the ethics of authenticity over rational moral principles, as he illustrates the principle that one should do what is imposed upon him by society only insofar as it would seem congruent with one's "secret principles" and feelings, being constituent of one's core identity. Thus unauthentic behavior would pave the way to self-destruction.
Arthur Schopenhauer cited Julie, or the New Heloise as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, Wilhelm Meister, and Don Quixote.
Reception
Historian Robert Darnton has argued that Julie "was perhaps the biggest best-seller of the century". Publishers could not print copies fast enough so they rented the book out by the day and even by the hour. According to Darnton, there were at least 70 editions in print before 1800, "probably more than for any other novel in the previous history of publishing."
But what was truly astonishing regarding Julie's popularity was not just its sales statistics, but the emotions it brought out in its readers. Readers were so overcome that they wrote to Rousseau in droves, creating the first celebrity author. One reader claimed that the novel nearly drove him mad from excess of feeling while another claimed that the violent sobbing he underwent cured his cold. Reader after reader describes their "tears", "sighs", "torments" and "ecstasies" to Rousseau. One wrote in a letter to Rousseau after finishing the novel:
I dare not tell you the effect it made on me. No, I was past weeping. A sharp pain convulsed me. My heart was crushed. Julie dying was no longer an unknown person. I believed I was her sister, her friend, her Claire. My seizure became so strong that if I had not put the book away I would have been as ill as all those who attended that virtuous woman in her last moments.
Like this reader, people became deeply invested in the lives of the characters in the novel, to an extent that was entirely new in fiction. In fact, some readers simply could not accept that the book was fiction. One woman wrote to Rousseau asking:
Many people who have read your book and discussed it with me assert that it is only a clever fabrication on your part. I can't believe that. If so, how could a mistaken reading have produced sensations like the ones I felt when I read the book? I implore you, Monsieur, tell me: did Julie really live? Is Saint-Preux still alive? What country on this earth does he inhabit? Claire, sweet Claire, did she follow her dear friend to the grave? M. de Wolmar, milord Edouard, all those persons, are they only imaginary as some want to convince me? If that be the case, what kind of a world do we inhabit, in which virtue is but an idea?
Other readers identified less with the individual characters and more with their general struggles. They saw in Julie a story of temptation, sin and redemption that resembled their own lives.
The success of Julie delighted Rousseau; he took pleasure in narrating a story about how a lady ordered a horse carriage to go to an Opera, and then picked up Julie only to continue reading the book till the next morning. So many women wrote to him offering their love that he speculated there was not a single high society woman with whom he would not have succeeded if he wanted to.