ABSTRACT
If remembrance was for Rousseau an essentially sentimental phenomenon, transcendent above the physical receptors that transmitted feeling, he did not minimize the importance of the physical objects which sparked it off: many later writers commented on the significance of the experience described in book VI of the Confessions (written between 1766 and 1769), where the sight of periwinkles brings back the moment of his first acquaintance with them over thirty years before. 1 But memory for Rousseau was primarily affective. The physical world might supply mnemonic prompts, but memory itself was an intangible and inward activity.
