Confessiones (Confessions) influenced Les Confessions (Confessions)

Rousseau took Augustine's title and then inverted the book under it. Augustine invented the form: a life told backwards from the point of conversion, addressed to God, with the shameful episodes included because the confession is the point. Rousseau keeps the structure, the candour and the small humiliating incidents, and removes the God. His account is addressed to other people and offered as self-justification rather than as repentance, which is what makes it the first modern autobiography. The debt is visible precisely because the title invites the comparison.