 Gordon
1595_M65b. Click on the call number to
access the digital facsimile of this volume.
Les essais de Michel seigneur de Montaigne. Edition nouuelle, / trouuee après le deceds de l'autheur, reueuë & augmentée par luy d'vn tiers plus qu'aux precedentes impressions.
Paris: Michel Sonnius, 1595.
There is currently no
print facsimile of this edition, so the University
of Virginia Library is pleased to make the digital
facsimile available to the public via the Gordon
Project.
|
 Gordon
1588 M.65 . Click on the call number to
access the digital facsimile of this volume.
Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne. Cinquiesme edition, / augment'ee d'un troisiesme liure: et de six cens additions aux deux premiers.
Paris: Abel L’Angelier, 1588.
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Que sçay-je?
Montaigne and the essai
Learn
more about the sixteenth-century editions of the
Essais in the Gordon Collection.
Lire les Essais
dans une édition du seizième siècle
(Tips for reading an original edition of
the Essais and dealing with sixteenth-century
language, spelling, punctuation and typography).
Read more about
the essay on cannibals, and the travel narratives
of Jean de Léry and André Thevet.
Read the entries for
Montaigne in the Bibliothèques
of La Croix du Maine (1584)
and Antoine du Verdier (1585).
Internet Resources
Que sçay-je?:
Montaigne and the essai
Que sçay-je? (“What do I know?”)
was Montaigne’s motto, and he chose the image of the
balance (scale) to represent his effort to weigh
knowledge against his personal experience. The scale is
in constant motion, and movement therefore characterizes
his ongoing attempt to express the self, ondoyant et
divers, in writing.
Montaigne was the first to use the term “essay”
to refer to a short discussion of a topic in prose. In Renaissance
France, an essai indicated a “trial”
or an “attempt”; the verb essayer meant
apprendre, connaître par expérience, éprouver
(to learn, to learn from experience, to try out or undergo).
Montaigne intended to use this short prose form to try out,
or weigh, his own views on life and to attempt to learn
more about himself, while sharing his experiences with others
in the process.
from
p. 203, Livre Troisiesme, “De l’Experience"
Montaigne covers a wide range of topics, each of which
is illustrated with anecdotes, proverbs, sayings and quotations
from classical authors in his library. His essays interweave
the philosophical and the personal, and each in some way
conveys Montaigne’s own experience, often reflecting
his desire to know and express the constantly changing self.
Montaigne’s essays exhibit a rambling rather than
a fixed formal style, choosing to follow the workings of
the human mind rather than the traditional rules of rhetoric.
In the search for answers to his central question, Que
sçay-je?, Montaigne discovers that reason alone
cannot bring him to the truth. Despite the limits of man’s
reason, however, Montaigne ultimately expresses faith in
the human condition and underscores the need to seek to
know oneself, however difficult the journey. For Montaigne,
happiness is only possible through personal experience and
self-knowledge, by finding the balance between knowledge
and living.
from
p. 193, Livre Troisiesme, "De l'Experience"
Montaigne believed his search for self-knowledge was representative
of the universal human condition. He chose to publish his
Essais to serve as a reflection of the human condition,
rather than to paint an ideal or exemplary figure.
"Ie
veux qu’on m’y voye en ma façon simple,
naturelle & ordinaire,
sans estude & artifice:
car c’est moy que ie peins."
from
the preface, “Au lecteur,” which is missing
in most of the Sonnius copies, but occurs in the majority
of the l’Angelier copies. (See bibliographical
information below, and Sayce and Maskell p. 29.)
Montaigne’s Essais knew immediate success
in France, following the publication of the first edition
(2 volumes) in 1580. Click on the link
below to read the text of contemporary accounts of Montaigne
and his work in the Bibliothèques of Antoine
du Verdier and La Croix du Maine, published after the first
edition of the Essais, and before the second.
Entries for Montaigne
in the Bibliothèques
of La Croix du Maine (1584)
and Antoine du Verdier (1585)
Montaigne’s Life
Page 105,
livre premier, chapitre
XXVII, De l’Amitié. |
Montaigne was born near Bordeaux, on
the family property where he eventually wrote his
Essais. As a young child, Montaigne’s
first language was Latin, his father having hired
a tutor with no knowledge of French. Montaigne attended
the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, then studied
law. As a magistrate in Bordeaux, he met Etienne de
la Boëtie, whose friendship (perfect, in Montaigne’s
eyes) is the main topic of the essay on friendship,
“De l’Amitié.” Montaigne
married and had six children, only one of whom survived
to adulthood.
In 1571, Montaigne left behind his active legal career
and retreated to the calm of the Château de
Montaigne. Retiring to his tower, he wished to spend
the rest of his life reading and writing his life’s
thoughts and experiences. He kept largely to that
plan, but did embark on a journey to Italy in 1580
to 1581. He kept a detailed journal of his
travels to Italy, which was not published
until 1774 (Gordon 1774 .M65). He
also returned to serve as Mayor of Bordeaux from 1581
to 1585. Other than those forays back into the world,
Montaigne remained at home and devoted himself to
his project of writing the self.
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"Des Cannibales" (livre premier, chapitre
XXX).
In chapter 30 of the first book, Montaigne questions what
he and his fellow Frenchmen know in the light of contemporary
accounts of cannibalism in the New World. The Gordon Collection
includes the published travel narratives of Jean
de Léry and André Thevet
that both include firsthand accounts of the New World cannibalism
that inspired Montaigne’s essay.
Read more about the essay on cannibals, and the
travel narratives of Jean de Léry and André
Thevet.
Editions of the Essais
Learn more about the sixteenth-century
editions of the Essais in the Gordon Collection,
and for other bibliographical information.
Lire les Essais dans une édition du seizième
siècle
Tips on reading an original edition
of the Essais, with sixteenth-century
language, spelling, punctuation and typography).
Internet Resources
Société des Amis de Montaigne: Includes information
on Montaigne’s life, the “sentences” in
his library, the Bordeaux Copy of the Essais, a
bibliography of recent scholarly publications about the
Essais, as well as a comprehensive list of links
to websites pertaining to Montaigne.
http://www.amisdemontaigne.net/
Ebauche de Bibliographie sur le Livre
III des Essais, par André Tournon: Extensive bibliography of studies
pertaining to the Essais, and to Book III in particular.
http://www.cesr.univ-tours.fr/SFDES/sfdes/Montaignebibl.htm
Montaigne Studies (U. of Chicago): Includes a portrait gallery,
an article on the reproduction of the Bordeaux copy, a complete
transcription of the Villey-Saulnier edition of the Essais,
with a selection of corresponding high-quality image files
from the Bordeaux Copy.
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/montaigne/
Trismegiste: Complete html transcription of the 1595 edition
of the Essais.
http://www.bribes.org/trismegiste/montable.htm
Gallica: 20 different editions of the Essais and
related works, available to download in pdf files from the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
http://gallica.bnf.fr
Portail Multimédia de Renaissance-France.org: Listen to sound recordings of excerpts from a selection of essays.
http://www.renaissance-france.org/multimedia/pages/pagmultimedia.html
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