Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete
Michel de Montaigne
Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete
ClassicsNonfictionPhilosophyEssays
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"Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete" by Michel de Montaigne is a collection of essays written between approximately 1570 and 1592. Montaigne set out to record his own character and humors with complete frankness, creating a new literary form he called "attempts" or "tests." The essays range from profound topics like conscience and sadness to trivial subjects like smells, examining human nature through skeptical inquiry. Writing during France's religious wars, Montaigne questioned certainty itself, asking "What do I know?" while freely associating ideas and drawing on classical sources.
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Michel de Montaigne withdrew from public life in 1571 to the library in the tower of his château near Bordeaux, and there began the pieces he called essais: trials or attempts. The first two books appeared in 1580, and the third, with many additions to the earlier ones, in 1588; he went on revising them until his death in 1592. The essays range from friendship, education and cannibals to sleep, smells, thumbs and the experience of growing old, and their real subject, Montaigne says, is himself. Sceptical, curious and often funny, he tests ideas against his own changeable judgement, summed up in his motto “What do I know?”. In doing so he gave a name and a shape to the essay as a form.
Characters
Montaigne — The essayist
The writer himself, who declares that he is the subject of his book and tests every question against his own experience.
Étienne de La Boétie — The friend
Montaigne’s closest friend, whose early death prompted the essay on friendship: “because it was he, because it was I”.
Pierre de Montaigne — The father
Who had his son brought up speaking Latin before French, and whose care Montaigne recalls with affection.
Socrates — The model
The philosopher Montaigne cites more than almost anyone, as the example of how to live and how to die.
Plutarch and Seneca — Favourite authors
The two writers he says he has drawn on most, quoted on almost every page.
The cannibals of Brazil — The others
The peoples of the New World, some of whom Montaigne met at Rouen, used to question who the real barbarians are.
About the author
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was a French writer and statesman, born at the Château de Montaigne in the Périgord, near Bordeaux, into a wealthy merchant family that had recently acquired noble status. His father had him brought up with Latin as his first language. He studied law and served for some years as a counsellor in the Parlement of Bordeaux, where he formed a deep friendship with the writer Étienne de La Boétie, whose early death in 1563 marked him for life. In 1571, aged thirty-eight, he retired to his estate to read and write, and in 1580 published the first two books of his Essays. While travelling in Germany, Switzerland and Italy he was elected mayor of Bordeaux, and served two terms. During France’s Wars of Religion he acted at times as a go-between for the rival Catholic and Protestant leaders. He died at his château in 1592.