Philippe Desan - The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne

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Oxford University Press 2016

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Library of congress cataloging in publication data

Names: Desan, Philippe, 1953, editor.

Title: The Oxford handbook of Montaigne / edited by Philippe Desan

Description: Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780190215330

eISBN 9780190215347

MONTAIGNE is the first French author to enter the Oxford Handbook series. He is in good company with Aristotle, Plato, Luther, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and the like. This form of canonization is well deserved, as the author of the Essays today enjoys a true global reception and is currently translated into more than thirty-five languages.

This project never would have seen the light of day without the encouragement and shepherding of Julia Kostova, my editor at Oxford University Press. I thank her for overseeing the various stages that made it possible to conceive and organize this volume. Likewise, Kathrin Immanuel and Tharani Ramachandran at Newgen Knowledge Works did wonderful work managing the production of the forty-two chapters, introduction, and conclusion of this handbook. The contributors to this volume also need to be acknowledged for elegantly and professionally following all the editorial constraints that were imposed on them. Without their impeccable scholarship and their insights, this Handbook would amount to very little.

Finally, a special thanks goes to my family who, as usual, offered their support during this two-year enterprise. Since Montaigne is also an author for generations to come, I dedicate this Handbook to Charlie, who is already questioning the world every day and has embarked on the discovery of his own Montaignian Self. I hope he will someday, in his turn, practice the Essays.

PHILIPPE DESAN

PHILIPPE DESAN

GEORGE HOFFMANN

JOHN OBRIEN

MIREILLE HABERT

MICHEL MAGNIEN

PHILIPPE DESAN

MARK GREENGRASS

JEAN BALSAMO

FRANOIS RIGOLOT

TIMOTHY J. REISS

JOHN D. LYONS

BIANCAMARIA FONTANA

ANN HARTLE

ZACHARY SAYRE SCHIFFMAN

PAUL J. SMITH

WARREN BOUTCHER

WILLIAM M. HAMLIN

MICHAEL MORIARTY

KATIE CHENOWETH

KATHY EDEN

DBORAH KNOP

PETER MACK

RICHARD SCHOLAR

MARIE-CLART LAGRE

VALRIE M. DIONNE

CYNTHIA NAZARIAN

ULLRICH LANGER

ALAIN LEGROS

JAN MIERNOWSKI

TODD W. REESER

MARY MCKINLEY

SARAH BAKEWELL

ERIC MACPHAIL

ELIZABETH GUILD

ANDREA FRISCH

ZAHI ZALLOUA

WES WILLIAMS

TOM CONLEY

KATHLEEN LONG

THIERRY GONTIER

CYNTHIA SKENAZI

DOROTHEA HEITSCH

PHILIPPE DESAN

Sarah Bakewell is an independent scholar and biographer. She teaches in the Master of Studies program in Creative Writing at Kellogg College, Oxford, and was a curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Library, London. Her books include How to Live: A Life of Montaigne (Chatto & Windus, 2010; Other Press, 2011), which was translated into 12 languages and won the National Books Critics Circle Award for Biography in the United States and the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-fiction in the United Kingdom; and, most recently, a biographical study of existentialist philosophers, At the Existentialist Caf (Chatto & Windus / Other Press, 2016).

Jean Balsamo, Professor at the Universit de Reims, teaches sixteenth-century French literature, philology, and book history. Coeditor of Montaignes Essais in the Bibliothque de la Pliade (Gallimard, 2007), he published De la Servitude volontaire: Rhtorique et politique en France sous les derniers Valois (Presses de lUniversit de Rouen, 2014, with Dborah Knop), a volume dedicated to La Botie. Among his latest publications is Lamorevolezza verso le cose Italiche: Le livre italien Paris au XVIesicle (Droz, 2015).

Warren Boutcher is Professor of Renaissance Studies in the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. His two-volume study of The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe (Vol. 1, The Patron-Author; Vol. 2, The Reader-Writer) was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press. He is currently working on transnational literatures in late Renaissance Europe, and has chapters on that subject forthcoming in International Exchange in the European Book World (Brill, edited by Sara Barker and Matthew McLean) and in Seventeenth-Century Fiction: Text & Transmission (Oxford University Press, edited by Jacqueline Glomski and Isabelle Moreau), both forthcoming in 2016.

Katie Chenoweth is Assistant Professor of French at Princeton University. She specializes in the history of print and other media with a focus on Renaissance France. She is currently completing a book on language and technology in the sixteenth century titled The Prosthetic Tongue: Print Technology and the Uncanny Rise of the Vernacular in Renaissance France. She is also working on Montaignes place in modern critical theory, especially in the work of Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Derrida.

Tom Conley is Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor at Harvard University. He teaches in the Department of Visual & Environmental Studies and the Department of Romance Languages. He has been visiting professor at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales and the cole nationale des Chartes. Recent books include fleur de page: Voir et lire le texte de la Renaissance (Classiques Garnier, 2015), An Errant Eye: Poetry and Topography in Early Modern France (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), and Cartographic Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). He has translated works by Marc Aug, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, and others. He is currently a fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Institute.

Philippe Desan is Howard L. Willett Professor of French Literature and History of Culture at the University of Chicago. Among his most recent books are Montaigne: A Life (Princeton University Press, 2016), Bibliotheca Desaniana: Catalogue Montaigne (Classiques Garnier, 2011), and Montaigne: Les formes du monde et de lesprit (Presses de lUniversit ParisSorbonne, 2008). He edited the Essays of 1582 (2005), the