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Romantic infancy in-between freedom and control: Locke, Rousseau and their Romantic legacies

This paper aims to depart from Locke's treatise on education, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and Rousseau's famous response, Émile ou de l'éducation (1762). Upon having read the French translation of Locke's treatise (Pensées sur L'Éducation des Enfants, 1721) Rousseau claimed that it was the first book on education he had read and that the subject was entirely new to him. Therefore, he hoped that after the publication of his own book, the new subject of infancy and education of a young man would finally be given extensive place in contemporary philosophical thought. According to Rousseau, ‘childhood’ is still an unknown stage in human life and ‘despite all the writings which are made for public utility, it seems that the first utility has been utterly disregarded – the art of raising human beings’ (Preface, Émile). The main temptation of this paper will be to establish a dialogical correspondence between the two works by focusing on the ideas of control and freedom in the eighteenth century social discourse. This type of correspondence would hopefully prove fruitful in elucidating the meaning of childhood and infancy in the works of Romantic poets such as Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge and the final recognition of childhood as being socially constructed.

infancy ; freedom ; control ; Locke ; Rousseau ; Blake ; Wordsworth ; Coleridge

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