Distinguo Reading Montaigne Differently [Hardcover]

Most modern critics (even those who have emphasized the evolution of Montaigne's ideas) have sought to explain away the contradictions and incoherences of Montaigne'sEssais. Rendall investigates the role of these internal differences in the opinions recorded, in voices and modes of discourse, in logical levels, in conceptions of writing and of reading, through a series of careful, lucid readings of selected passages ofEssais. The author tracks their operation in the text and shows how Montaigne's writing constantly recontextualizes his own discourse--through his practice of interpolating new material in successive editions and adding new chapters--as well as that of other authors through quotation, paraphrase, and commentary. Rather than merely negative features, Rendall argues that such differences are essential to a practice of writing that both defines and challenges a notion of unity and can be seen as an uneasy and disturbing element related to a historical shift from earlier ways of controlling meaning to one based on the author function. This careful and lucid book presents a fresh and significant interpretation of theEssaisand shows how Montaigne's work might be read in a different way.

An elegant, complex, provocative study. --Comparative Literature

Original illuminating, even seminal. --Sixteenth Century Journal

Rendall's study is distinguished by its rigor of argument and its clarity and even elegance of style....A ground-breaking and admirable exploration, both in providing copious information about Montaignean textual practices and contexts and in stimulating the reader's own `Yes, but...' of reading pleasure. --Renaissance Quarterly

A welcome addition to his earlier work and to the corpus of Montaigne scholarship....[A] fine contribution. The book may mark the end of one era of Montaigne scholarship and make way for another. --Modern Philology