“Sentimental Education” with Guillaume de Loris, Jean de Meung, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marivaux

Abstract

Referring to the novels prior to Flaubert’s L’Education Sentimentale as instances of ‘sentimental education’, two types of narration can be identified: one postulating that the essential is to be found in discontinuities and looking at the ‘sentimental education’ as a romantic invention, the other — on the contrary — discovering the cult of the beloved woman, according to the medieval pattern. These two opposing perspectives — discontinuity vs. permanence — are equally valid. The birth of the novel corresponds to the position of women in society, with an obvious interest in her and a freely consented masculine subordination. Since the advent of Roman de la Rose (13th century), the novels have illustrated or merely suggested an ‘education of the feelings’ or, rather, an ‘education through feelings’. The deadlock of the idea of sentimental education can be encountered both in Rousseau’s work and in Marivaux’s retrospective, first person novels.