Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Terence Cave is Emeritus Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford, Emeritus Research Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance and other studies in early modern French culture.

Terence Cave is Emeritus Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford, Emeritus Research Fellow of St John's College, Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy.

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How To Read Montaigne

Granta Books

‘It is the only book of its kind in the world, wild and extravagantin conception’ (II.8): this is how on one occasionMichel de Montaigne describes the extraordinary miscellanyof writings which he first published in 1580 and which hesubsequently elaborated and extended until his death in 1592.The Essais, as he called it, is a highly original outgrowth ofthe humanist, Latin-based culture of late Renaissance France.Michel de Montaigne’s father engaged tutors to speak Latin tohim from his earliest childhood, so that he was virtually bilingualin French and Latin. His family had made its money intrade and its aristocratic title was only recently acquired; hehimself had legal training and occupied prominent positions inthe local judiciary and administration. Some three years afterhis father died in 1568, he gave up these public duties, at leastfor a while, in order to devote himself to his domestic responsibilities.This ‘retirement’ also had another purpose, however:it gave him leisure to read, reflect and write, and within aremarkably short time he was beginning to compose fragmentsof what would become the Essais, the only originalcomposition that he published during his lifetime.

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