ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the problematics of reading sentimental topoi, scenes, and spectacles in Julie. It focuses on the effects of reading for the part rather than the whole of the novel, and of changing the sequence of reading, in relation to the functioning of the novel's sentimental scenes, which can be (re)read subversively — against the grain. Rousseau's Dialogues are, amongst other things, a tortuous meditation on the effects of reading: on what it means to read rightly and to misread. The insistent repetition of certain key and connected assertions is striking. Notwithstanding Rousseau's directions, and critical attempts to re-establish the novel's unity, Julie lends itself to various types of partial reading. Rousseau's use of images in Julie reflects a wider preoccupation with their potentially beneficial and damaging effects, and their signifying power, discussed and self-consciously deployed in his other texts, and forming part of a wider aesthetic, epistemological, and moral debate.
