Michel de Montaigne
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Michel de Montaigne (February 28 1533–September 13 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance.
Essay
Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography — and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written.
The book is a collection of a large number of short subjective treatments of various topics. Montaigne's stated goal is to describe man, and especially himself, with utter frankness. He finds the great variety and volatility of human nature to be its most basic features. He describes his own poor memory, his ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting emotionally involved, his disdain for man's pursuit of lasting fame, and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for his timely death.
He writes about his disgust with the religious conflicts of his time, believing that humans are not able to attain true certainty (skepticism). His long Apology for Raymond Sebond contains his famous motto, "What do I know?"
Montaigne considered marriage necessary for the raising of children, but disliked the strong feelings of passionate love as being detrimental to freedom. In education, he favored concrete examples and experience over the teaching of abstract knowledge that has to be accepted uncritically.
Influence
Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Montaigne is recognized as expressing, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the doubts and thoughts of his age. Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly — his own judgment — makes him more accessible than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction owes its genesis to Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read Montaigne for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.
In his own time
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. His tendency in his essays to diverge into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as a detriment rather than an innovation, and his stated motto that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by contemporary writers as self-indulgent.
