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Montaigne, Michel de, --- Criticism and interpretation.

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One of the most important writers and thinkers of the Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) helped invent a literary genre that seemed more modern than anything that had come before. But did he do it, as he suggests in his Essays, by retreating to his chateau, turning his back on the world, and stoically detaching himself from his violent times? In this definitive biography, Philippe Desan, one of the world's leading authorities on Montaigne, overturns this longstanding myth by showing that Montaigne was constantly concerned with realizing his political ambitions-and that the literary and philosophical character of the Essays largely depends on them. The most comprehensive and authoritative biography of Montaigne yet written, this sweeping narrative offers a fascinating new picture of his life and work.As Desan shows, Montaigne always considered himself a political figure and he conceived of each edition of the Essays as an indispensable prerequisite to the next stage of his public career. He lived through eight civil wars, successfully lobbied to be raised to the nobility, and served as mayor of Bordeaux, special ambassador, and negotiator between Henry III and Henry of Navarre. It was only toward the very end of Montaigne's life, after his political failure, that he took refuge in literature. But, even then, it was his political experience that enabled him to find the right tone for his genre.In this essential biography, we discover a new Montaigne-caught up in the events of his time, making no separation between private and public life, and guided by strategy first in his words and silences. Neither candid nor transparent, but also not yielding to the cynicism of his age, this Montaigne lends a new depth to the Montaigne of literary legend.

Authors, French --- Montaigne, Michel de, --- Political and social views.

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This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne's Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern western university. Volume One focuses on contexts from within Montaigne's own milieu and on the ways in which his book made him a patron-author or instant classic in the eyes of his editor Marie de Gournay and his promoter Justus Lipsius. Volume Two focuses on the reader/writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works, from corrected editions and translations in print, to life-writing and personal records in manuscript. The two volumes work together to offer a new picture of the book's significance in literary and intellectual history. Montaigne's is now usually understood to be the school of late humanism or of Pyrrhonian scepticism. This study argues that the school of Montaigne potentially included everyone in early modern Europe with occasion and means to read and write for themselves and for their friends and family, unconstrained by an official function or scholastic institution. For the Essais were shaped by a battle that had intensified since the Reformation and that would continue through to the pre-Enlightenment period. It was a battle to regulate the educated individual's judgement in reading and acting upon the two books bequeathed by God to man. The book of scriptures and the book of nature were becoming more accessible through print and manuscript cultures. But at the same time that access was being mediated more intensively by teachers such as clerics and humanists, by censors and institutions, by learned authors of past and present, and by commentaries and glosses upon those authors. Montaigne enfranchised the unofficial reader-writer with liberties of judgement offered and taken in the specific historical conditions of his era. The study draws on new ways of approaching literary history through the history of the book and of reading. The Essais are treated as a mobile, transnational work that travelled from Bordeaux to Paris and beyond to markets in other countries from England and Switzerland, to Italy and the Low Countries. Close analysis of editions, paratexts, translations, and annotated copies is informed by a distinct concept of the social context of a text. The concept is derived from anthropologist Alfred Gell's notion of the "art nexus": the specific types of actions and agency relations mediated by works of art understood as "indexes" that give rise to inferences of particular kinds. Throughout the two volumes the focus is on the particular nexus in which a copy, an edition, an extract, is embedded, and on the way that nexus might be described by early modern people.

French literature --- History and criticism --- de Montaigne, Michel, --- Essais français --- French essays --- French essays. --- Philosophie. --- Histoire et critique. --- History and criticism. --- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, --- Montaigne, Michel de, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Essais (Montaigne, Michel de). --- Europa. --- French literature. --- Influence. --- 1500-1599. --- French literature - 16th century - History and criticism --- de Montaigne, Michel, - 1533-1592 --- de Montaigne, Michel, - 1533-1592 - Les Essais

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On parle de Saint-Évremond surtout pour rappeler qu’il fait partie des grands exilés de l’histoire mais son œuvre est rarement étudiée en tant que telle. Elle n’a notamment jamais fait l’objet d’une rencontre spécifique. Le colloque de Cerisy, dont nous présentons les Actes, entendait donc réparer un oubli. Des écrits de celui qui redoutait par-dessus tout de passer pour un « auteur » il convient en effet de souligner tout à la fois l’abondance – qui s’explique en partie par sa longévité – et l’importance : conteur, nouvelliste, chroniqueur autant que versificateur, Saint-Évremond fait aussi œuvre de moraliste, de philosophe, de critique, et notamment de critique musical, d’historien. Notre ambition a été d’envisager les domaines qui ont été jusqu’ici le moins fréquemment abordés, de renouveler l’approche de ceux qui ont déjà été traités, de souligner enfin la place que cet auteur occupe dans l’histoire des idées et dans l’évolution de la littérature des siècles classiques.

Saint-Évremond, de, Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis --- Authors, French --- Civilization, Modern --- Ecrivains français --- Civilisation --- Congresses --- Congrès --- Saint-Evremond, --- Ecrivains français --- Congrès --- Congresses. --- Humanities, Multidisciplinary --- Voltaire --- Montaigne --- Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis Saint Evremond --- opéra --- Musique --- philosophie --- XVIIIe siècle --- XVIIIème siècle --- Voltaire (1694-1778) --- Montaigne, Michel de (1533-1592) --- Saint-Évremond, Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis (1613-1703 ; seineur de) --- Opéra --- Philosophie --- 18e siècle