Montaigne: A Life

by Philippe Desan, Steven Rendall (Translator), Lisa Neal (Translator)

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, 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.

Genres: Biography, History, Philosophy, France, Nonfiction

832 pages, Hardcover

Published January 24, 2017

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a magnificent feat of scholarship, reflecting over twenty years of studying Montaigne, but it's not for the casual or even lightly-engaged reader, it's for the Montaigne specialist. As someone who knows the Essays and teaches Montaigne as an adjunct to Renaissance literature, I found this interesting but overwhelming.

It's certainly fascinating to see the other side, as it were, of Montaigne: the public man, the servant of the state, the magistrate and diplomat and state negotiator, but to really engage with this book you need to be both interested in, and party to, the detailed minutiae of C16th French national and local politics.

So I enjoyed this is part (which is certainly down to me, not the book): the famous friendship with La Boétie, the writing of the Essays, Montaigne's negotiations between the political and philosophical life, especially the appropriations of both his life and writings after his death.

With about 250 pages of endnotes, this isn't quite as long as it first appears but is certainly one for the academic specialist working on Montaigne.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via Netgalley

[Katherine Wacker · Rating 2 out of 5]

In Montaigne: A Life, Philippe Desan takes an in-depth look at one of the most influential and, at times, controversial writers and thinkers of the Renaissance. Part biography, part philosophical treatise, this highly-detailed volume translated from the French presents Montaigne as a political luminary intent on making a name for himself. This scholarly work not only addresses the man and his writings but the turbulent times in which he lived. A witness to constant civil and religious war, Montaigne bounced back and forth from public to private life while working on his Essais, the record of his personal political commentary. Due to the volatility of his environment, his opinions could be considered as careful, but they still sparked controversy. It is considered the seminal work of Montaigne’s time.

Montaigne: A Life is an academic tome. The book’s structure presents this French political figure chronologically, but is interspersed continuously with social and historical commentary. As a result, the content feels circular and, at times, becomes tedious and difficult to follow. Thus this ground-breaking work with copious footnotes is geared for an academic audience who specialize in French History and philoshophy. However, in reading Montaigne: A Life, it is not difficult to understand why this man and his writing will continue to be studied for generations to come.



I was given a free copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

[Tony Gualtieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhaustively comprehensive, this book gives more about Montaigne than the casual reader needs. It also requires some knowledge of the labyrinthine course of French history during the wars of religion. Montaigne, himself, remains elusive. How did this provincial nobleman evolve to produce a text of such novelty and wisdom?

[Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A monumental life that is both important and, at times, hard to get through. Strong advice (unless you are a Montaigne specialist) is to read the final portions—Montaigne's Political Posterity and Epilogue—first. In those sections, Desan lays out his historicist agenda and lays waste to modern readings that find in Montaigne what readers are looking for, rather than what was, contextually, there in the first place. No one is going to thank Desan for this, most likely, since using Montaigne as a mirror to find oneself has been a cottage industry from the beginning. It turns out that the man himself is far more interesting when rendered contextually. Desan's main thesis is that the Essays were always meant to serve other ends than self-regarding philosophizing or cut-rate aphorism-making—the ends to which the text is largely turned today. MdM wrote his book to serve his own evolving conception of self, which, in Desan's argument, was essentially political. The earliest version of the text was aimed at stabilizing a particular public version of MdM's self in order to forward his hoped-for career as a diplomat extraordinary. After that end was frustrated and MdM found himself, at the king's behest, serving as mayor of Bordeaux, he refashioned the essays to fit his changing political self-conception. As his term in the mayoralty came to an end and MdM found himself in a delicate position of mediating between Henri III and the future Henri IV, he once again tailored his essays to suit his understanding of himself. And when these political efforts came to a fruitless end and MdM retired definitively, he undertook a last set of extensive revisions designed to make the Essays his 'child' to carry forth his image to posterity. Because modern readers tend to be much taken with the essays in the third book (which was key to this last self-conception of MdM's), they tend to read the gnomic, withdrawn, content-in-his-retirement MdM back into the earlier portions of the text. Desan essentially says this will not do, that in order to understand the book (really, it should be books), one has to see the volume's changes as manufactured to suit MdM's needs at the time, needs which were always fundamentally political. I think Desan makes his case. But slogging through some of the extensive contextualizations he offers, for instance, of careers in Guyenne or life in the parlements, is tough going. For most readers, the final two sections are all you need. For those who want to have the veils of accrued misreadings of the life slowly (very slowly) torn away, going through the whole text is ultimately necessary.

[History Today]

Michel de Montaigne was not just the inventor of a genre, nor merely the author of the Essays, which have gripped readers from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf and Orson Welles. He also led an extraordinary life. Descended from merchants, he underwent unusual immersion in Latin during his pre-school years. From the age of six onwards he was taught by leading Renaissance humanists (including the Scot George Buchanan) at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux. Michel entered the nobility, thanks to a combination of the family’s seigneury (purchased by his grandfather) and a councillorship in the Bordeaux Parlement (obtained through nepotism). There, he drafted reports on thorny lawsuits, which he helped judge. But, opposed to the condemnation to death of Protestants by the Parlement and with his options changed by the loss of his father, when he was passed over for promotion Michel resigned his office and withdrew to the family estate, aged just 38.

Although Montaigne’s tower was soon built – complete with chapel, bedroom and library – he did not immediately become the reclusive author of legend. Certainly, he spent some of the ensuing decade writing a work published in 1580 as the Essays (later greatly expanded). He also forged a new career as emissary and negotiator in the Wars of Religion that were tearing France apart. Recommended to the king (Charles IX) by a powerful Guyenne neighbour (Gaston de Foix), whose château was just 20 kilometres away, Montaigne was made Knight of the Order of St Michael. It was a huge social leap. Unusually, he also became Gentleman of the Chamber of the great pretender to the throne, the Protestant Henri de Navarre (later Henri IV). Montaigne was a go-between, valued by both sides.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Neil Kenny is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. His books include Death and Tenses: Posthumous Presence in Early Modern France (Oxford, 2015).

[Mia]

Did Not Finish - I've read a bit over 200 pages but it doesn't feel worth it to push myself through the rest of the book. The content is interesting but Desan does NOT know how to filter out irrelevant information or excessive details. He will go on for pages and pages about something that could be communicated just as sufficiently in a paragraph or two, and I am not pushing myself through another 400 pages of this.