Montaigne and the Life of Freedom

A new interpretation of the Essais, situating Montaigne's project of self-study in the context of a broader commitment to liberty.

Felicity Green (Author)

9781107024397, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 June 2012

265 pages
23.4 x 16 x 1.6 cm, 0.5 kg

'Stimulating and challenging.' The Times Literary Supplement

More than any other early modern text, Montaigne's Essais have come to be associated with the emergence of a distinctively modern subjectivity, defined in opposition to the artifices of language and social performance. Felicity Green challenges this interpretation with a compelling revisionist reading of Montaigne's text, centred on one of his deepest but hitherto most neglected preoccupations: the need to secure for himself a sphere of liberty and independence that he can properly call his own, or himself. Montaigne and the Life of Freedom restores the Essais to its historical context by examining the sources, character and significance of Montaigne's project of self-study. That project, as Green shows, reactivates and reshapes ancient practices of self-awareness and self-regulation, in order to establish the self as a space of inner refuge, tranquillity and dominion, free from the inward compulsion of the passions and from subjection to external objects, forces and persons.

Introduction
1. Freedom and the essai
2. The languages of the self: Montaigne's classical inheritance
3. Self-possession, public engagement and slavery
4. Oysiveté and nonchalance: liberty as carelessness
5. The art of self-management
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary essays [DNF]