Enlightenment Workshop: Short film about Rousseau’s Cave and Roundtable on Rousseau’s Politics of Taste (2024) by Jared Holley

11/02/2026, 3:30 pm

11 Feb.  At the Maison Française d’Oxford, Norham Road:

3.30pm: Stephen Leach and Stephen Hilyard (University of Wisconsin Madison)

“Remember a Poor Hermit”: A Reconstruction of ‘Rousseau’s Cave’ (including showing of short film about Rousseau’s Cave at Wootton Hall in  Staffordshire).

Discussion led by Jenny Mander (Newnham College, Cambridge) with tea and coffee.

From March 1766 to May 1767 Jean-Jacques Rousseau – fleeing from persecution in France and Switzerland – stayed in the remote hamlet of Wootton in Staffordshire. There he wrote the first half of his Confessions in a garden hermitage, a structure half natural and half architectural, ever since known as ‘Rousseau’s Cave.’ Our paper records the hermitage in its current state (exposed to the elements); it creates a digital reconstruction of the hermitage as it was in Rousseau’s lifetime; and it provides digital access to a monument that is otherwise not generally accessible. Through high-quality digital reconstructions, recreating the hermitage as it is now and as it was in Rousseau’s lifetime, we provide a new perspective upon the creation of one of the world’s greatest works of literature. At the same time, in providing an accurate record of a modest but fairly typical eighteenth century garden hermitage we hope to contribute to the study of garden hermitages and to the history of eighteenth century gardens.

5.00pm: Roundtable on Rousseau’s Politics of Taste (2024) by Jared Holley.

Discussants: Jane Cooper (All Souls College, Oxford), Holly Rowe (Lincoln College, Oxford), and Olivier Higgins (New College, Oxford).

Response: Jared Holley (University of Edinburgh). Drinks will be served after the event.