Download or read book Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy written by David Quint and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a fresh reading of Montaigne's Essais, David Quint portrays the great Renaissance writer as both a literary man and a deeply engaged political thinker concerned with the ethical basis of society and civil discourse. From the first essay, Montaigne places the reader in a world of violent political conflict reminiscent of the French Wars of Religion through which he lived and wrote. Quint shows how a group of interrelated essays, including the famous one on the cannibals of Brazil, explores the confrontation between warring adversaries: a clement or vindictive victor and his suppliant or defiant captive. How can the two be reconciled? In a climate of hatred and obstinacy, Montaigne argues not only for the political necessity but also for the moral imperative of trusting and submitting to others and of extending mercy to them. For Quint, this ethical message informs other topics of the Essais: Montaigne's criticism of stoic models of virtue, his project to reform the cruel behavior of his noble class, his self-portrait that depicts his relaxed and unstudied nature, and his measuring of his own behavior against the classical virtue of Socrates. Quint's reading, attentive to Montaigne's verbal artistry and to his historical and cultural context, shows the essayist always aware of the other side of the issue. The moral thought of the Essais emerges as startlingly modern, both in the perennial urgency of Montaigne's concerns and in the self-questioning open-endedness of his doctrine. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy written by David Quint and published by . This book was released on 2014-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a fresh reading of Montaigne's Essais, David Quint portrays the great Renaissance writer as both a literary man and a deeply engaged political thinker concerned with the ethical basis of society and civil discourse. From the first essay, Montaigne places the reader in a world of violent political conflict reminiscent of the French Wars of Religion through which he lived and wrote. Quint shows how a group of interrelated essays, including the famous one on the cannibals of Brazil, explores the confrontation between warring adversaries: a clement or vindictive victor and his suppliant or defiant captive. How can the two be reconciled? In a climate of hatred and obstinacy, Montaigne argues not only for the political necessity but also for the moral imperative of trusting and submitting to others and of extending mercy to them. For Quint, this ethical message informs other topics of the Essais Montaigne's criticism of stoic models of virtue, his project to reform the cruel behavior of his noble class, his self-portrait that depicts his relaxed and unstudied nature, and his measuring of his own behavior against the classical virtue of Socrates. Quint's reading, attentive to Montaigne's verbal artistry and to his historical and cultural context, shows the essayist always aware of the other side of the issue. The moral thought of the Essais emerges as startlingly modern, both in the perennial urgency of Montaigne's concerns and in the self-questioning open-endedness of his doctrine. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Light Without Heat written by David Carroll Simon and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Argues for the importance of states of careless inattention and easygoing dispassion to literary and scientific works inspired by Francis Bacon's philosophy of nature, retrieving a counternarrative to the rise of scientific method and its attendant ethos of rigor in the intellectual culture of seventeenth-century England"--
Download or read book Shakespeare s Essays written by Peter G. Platt and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives.
Download or read book Shakespeare Machiavelli and Montaigne written by Hugh Grady and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The four plays of Shakespeare's Henriad and the slightly later Hamlet brilliantly explore interconnections between political power and interior subjectivity as productions of the newly emerging constellation we call modernity. Hugh Grady argues that for Shakespeare subjectivity was a critical, negative mode of resistance to power--not, as many recent critics have asserted, its abettor.
Download or read book Michel de Montaigne written by Ann Hartle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-27 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, has always been acknowledged as a great literary figure but has never been thought of as a philosophical original. This book treats Montaigne as a serious thinker in his own right, taking as its point of departure Montaigne's description of himself as 'an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher'. Whereas previous commentators have treated Montaigne's Essays as embodying a scepticism harking back to classical sources, Ann Hartle offers an account that reveals Montaigne's thought to be dialectical, transforming sceptical doubt into wonder at the most familiar aspects of life. This major reassessment of a much admired but also much underestimated thinker will interest a wide range of historians of philosophy as well as scholars in comparative literature, French studies and the history of ideas.
Download or read book Montaigne A Very Short Introduction written by William M. Hamlin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French author Michel de Montaigne is widely regarded as the founder and greatest practitioner of the personal essay. A member of the minor aristocracy, he worked as a judicial investigator, served as mayor of Bordeaux, and sought to bring stability to his war-torn country during the latter half of the sixteenth century. He is best known today, however, as the author of the Essays, a vast collection of meditations on topics ranging from love and sexuality to freedom, learning, doubt, self-scrutiny, and peace of mind. One of the most original books ever to emerge from Europe, Montaigne's masterpiece has been continuously and powerfully influential among writers and philosophers from its first appearance down to the present day. His extraordinary curiosity and discernment, combined with his ability to mix thoughtful judgment with revealing anecdote, make him one of the most readable of all writers. In Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction, William M. Hamlin provides an overview of Montaigne's life, thought, and writing, situating the Essays within the arc of Montaigne's lived experience and focusing on themes of particular interest for contemporary readers. Designed for a broad audience, this introduction will appeal to first-time students of Montaigne as well as to seasoned experts and admirers. Well-informed and lucidly written, Hamlin's book offers an ideal point of entry into the life and work of the world's first and most extraordinary essayist.
Download or read book Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics written by Douglas I. Thompson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Toleration is one of the most studied concepts in contemporary political theory and philosophy, yet the range of contemporary normative prescriptions concerning how to do toleration or how to be tolerant is remarkably narrow and limited. Contemporary thinking about toleration evinces, paradoxically, an intolerance of politics. This book argues for toleration as a practice of negotiation, looking to a philosopher not usually considered political: Michel de Montaigne. For Montaigne, toleration is an expansive, active practice of political endurance in negotiating public goods across lines of value difference. In other words, to be tolerant means to possess a particular set of political capacities for negotiation. Douglas Thompson draws on Montaigne's Essais to recover the idea that political negotiation grows out of genuine care for public goods and the establishment of political trust. Thompson argues that we need a Montaignian conception of toleration today if we are to negotiate effectively the circumstances of increasing political polarization and ongoing value conflict, and he applies this notion to current debates in political theory, as well to contemporary issues, including the problem of migration and refugee asylum. Additionally, for Montaigne scholars, he reads the Essais principally as a work of public political education, and resituates the work as an extension of Montaigne's political activity as a high-level negotiator between Catholic and Huguenot parties during the French Wars of Religion"--
Download or read book Montaigne written by Philippe Desan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive biography of the great French essayist and thinker 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 and stoically detaching himself from his violent times? Philippe Desan overturns this long standing myth by showing that Montaigne was constantly connected to and concerned with realizing his political ambitions—and that the literary and philosophical character of the Essays largely depends on them. Desan shows how Montaigne conceived of each edition of the Essays as an indispensable prerequisite to the next stage of his public career. It was only after his political failure that Montaigne took refuge in literature, and even then it was his political experience that enabled him to find the right tone for his genre. The most comprehensive and authoritative biography of Montaigne yet written, this sweeping narrative offers a fascinating new picture of his life and work.
Download or read book Essaying Montaigne written by John O'Neill and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John O'Neill reads Montaigne's 'Essays' from the principle of friendship as a communicative and pedagogical practice in society, literature and politics. He shows how subjectivity is shaken by its internal weakness once we move inside the structure of domination in politics, gender and race.
Download or read book Montaigne and Shakespeare written by Suzanne Ellrodt and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is not merely a study of Shakespeare’s debt to Montaigne. It traces the evolution of self-consciousness in literary, philosophical and religious writings from antiquity to the Renaissance and demonstrates that its early modern forms first appeared in the Essays and in Shakespearean drama. It shows, however, that, contrary to some postmodern assumptions, the early calling in question of the self did not lead to a negation of identity. Montaigne acknowledged the fairly stable nature of his personality and Shakespeare, as Dryden noted, maintained 'the constant conformity of each character to itself from its very first setting out in the Play quite to the End'. A similar evolution is traced in the progress from an objective to a subjective apprehension of time from Greek philosophy to early modern authors. A final chapter shows that the influence of scepticism on Montaigne and Shakespeare was counterbalanced by their reliance on permanent humanistic values.
Download or read book Montaigne s Politics written by Biancamaria Fontana and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-20 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) is principally known today as a literary figure--the inventor of the modern essay and the pioneer of autobiographical self-exploration who retired from politics in midlife to write his private, philosophical, and apolitical Essais. But, as Biancamaria Fontana argues in Montaigne's Politics, a novel, vivid account of the political meaning of the Essais in the context of Montaigne's life and times, his retirement from the Bordeaux parliament in 1570 "could be said to have marked the beginning, rather than the end, of his public career." He later served as mayor of Bordeaux and advisor to King Henry of Navarre, and, as Fontana argues, Montaigne's Essais very much reflect his ongoing involvement and preoccupation with contemporary politics--particularly the politics of France's civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. Fontana shows that the Essais, although written as a record of Montaigne's personal experiences, do nothing less than set forth the first major critique of France's ancien régime, anticipating the main themes of Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire and Diderot. Challenging the views that Montaigne was politically aloof or evasive, or that he was a conservative skeptic and supporter of absolute monarchy, Fontana explores many of the central political issues in Montaigne's work--the reform of legal institutions, the prospects of religious toleration, the role of public opinion, and the legitimacy of political regimes.
Download or read book Montaigne s Essais written by Wendell John Coats and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2004 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an extensive and textual analysis of Montaigne's essays - both the relevant Villey French texts as well as the Frame English translations. It identifies and illustrates a unifying, recurring theme in the ostensibly diverse and often apparently contradictory essays of the sixteenth-century writer - the attempt at psychic harmony through «temporal solipsism», or living insofar as possible in the present moment by doing things for their own sake rather than for extrinsic purposes. Placing Montaigne in historical context, Montaigne's Essais argues that he implicitly provides his own synthesis of pagan and Christian ideas, with no fewer tensions than the Aquinian synthesis. A concluding bibliographic essay addresses some issues of scholarly controversy, primarily from the perspectives of philosophy and political theory.
Download or read book Montaigne and Brief Narrative Form written by D. Losse and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length study to trace the origins of the essay to the conte, Montaigne and Brief Narrative Form puts the reader in touch with how unstable times and exceptional artistic insights transform one genre to create a new artistic form.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne written by Philippe Desan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 841 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1580, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) published a book unique by its title and its content: Essays"R. A literary genre was born. At first sight, the Essays resemble a patchwork of personal reflections, but they engage with questions that animate the human mind, and tend toward a single goal: to live better in the present and to prepare for death. For this reason, Montaigne's thought and writings have been a subject of enduring interest across disciplines. This Handbook brings together essays by prominent scholars that examine Montaigne's literary, philosophical, and political contributions, and assess his legacy and relevance today in a global perspective. The chapters of this Handbook offer a sweeping study of Montaigne across different disciplines and in a global perspective. One section covers the historical Montaigne, situating his thought in his own time and space, notably the Wars of Religion in France. The political, historical and religious context of Montaigne's Essays requires a rigorous presentation to inform the modern reader of the issues and problems that confronted Montaigne and his contemporaries in his own time. In addition to this contextual approach to Montaigne, the Handbook also establishes a connection between Montaigne's writings and issues and problems directly relevant to our modern times, that is to say, our age of global ideology. Montaigne's considerations, or essays, offer a point of departure for the modern reader's own assessments. The Essays analyze what can be broadly defined as human nature, the endless process by which the individual tries to impose opinions upon others through the production of laws, policies or philosophies. Montaigne's motto -- "What do I know?" -- is a simple question yet one of perennial significance. One could argue that reading Montaigne today teaches us that the angle defines the world we see, or, as Montaigne wrote: "What matters is not merely that we see the thing, but how we see it."
Download or read book Montaigne and the Ethics of Skepticism written by Zahi Anbra Zalloua and published by Rookwood Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the 16th century's most brilliant writers, Montaigne formed his ethical self and his eventual theories of physical and spiritual skepticism. Zalloua explores this enlightened thinker's mind. (Literary Criticism)
Download or read book Montaigne and the Lives of the Philosophers written by Alison Calhoun and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his Essais, Montaigne stresses that his theoretical interest in philosophy goes hand in hand with its practicality. In fact, he makes it clear that there is little reason to live our lives according to doctrine without proof that others have successfully done so. Understanding Montaigne’s philosophical thought, therefore, means not only studying the philosophies of the great thinkers, but also the characters and ways of life of the philosophers themselves. The focus of Montaigne and the Lives of the Philosophers: Life Writing and Transversality in the Essais is how Montaigne assembled the lives of the philosophers on the pages of his Essais in order to grapple with two fundamental aims of his project: first, to transform the teaching of moral philosophy, and next, to experiment with a transverse construction of his self. Both of these objectives grew out of a dialogue with the structure and content in the life writing of Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, authors whose books were bestsellers during the essayist’s lifetime.
