Jardin de la médiathèque Joseph Rousse

Come and enjoy an outdoor reading break in the media library's garden!

The garden at the Joseph Rousse multimedia library is open all year round. When the weather is fine, the multimedia library offers open-air shows.

You can simply come and read a book in a deckchair and enjoy this place to dream!

The municipal multimedia library is named after the poet, anthologist, historian and politician Joseph Rousse (1838-1909).

He was born on 12 February 1838 in La Plaine.
He belonged to an old seafaring family, his father and both grandfathers being ocean-going captains. Lulled by old sailors' songs, his dreamy soul led him to poetry.

A law graduate, Joseph Rousse first joined the judiciary. He published his first poems in 1865 in the Revue de Bretagne et Vendée.

In 1866, his health forced him to stay at Le Croisic and Pornic, where he wrote the collection of poems Au Pays de Retz.

Joseph Rousse's political career began during his brief involvement in journalism. A conservative Republican, in October 1871 he was elected Republican general councillor for the canton of Pornic.
Thanks to his intervention with the owner of the land on which the Mousseaux burial mound was located, she decided to donate it to the town of Pornic.

In 1872, Joseph Rousse was appointed judge at the Lannion court.
The following year, he married Marie-Thèrèse Rousselot (daughter of a banker from Nantes). The couple had four daughters. It was also in 1873 that he was appointed judge at Châteaubriant.

In 1874 he was re-elected in the canton of Pornic.
In 1876, he lost the legislative elections in Loire-Inférieure in the Paimbœuf district to a royalist, the Comte de Juigné. He then gave up his political career and went into partnership with his brothers-in-law from the Nantes bank Rousselot.

In 1891, Joseph Rousse, ruined by the bankruptcy of the Rousselot bank, obtained a job as assistant librarian at the Nantes municipal library.
He became Curator in 1895.
That same year, Joseph Rousse published his major work: La Poésie bretonne au XIXe siècle. It is a study of the Breton poetic art of his century, in which the mysticism of the Celtic soul and the feeling of Breton nationality appear as the sources of inspiration for the Breton poets of his time.
He is also the author of numerous studies of local history and genealogical works.

In July 1908, Joseph Rousse left his position at the Nantes Library. He died in Paris at the home of his son-in-law on 10 May 1909. He is buried with his brother, the painter Adolphe Rousse, in Pornic cemetery.

His presence at the heart of local life and his literary work certainly merited the media library in La Plaine-sur-Mer being named after him!