Montaigne: Philosopher of the French Renaissance
In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks about the enduring legacy of the essays of Montaigne with Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live, or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer.
45 minutes.
The layers of the text
There were several editions of the Essays during Montaigne’s lifetime, and he continued to revise his work extensively. He annotated and emended a personal copy—now known as the “Exemplaire de Bordeaux”—in preparation for what was likely to be a new, fully revised edition. But Montaigne died before he could finalize it, and we do not know what text he ultimately intended.
The University of Chicago has digitized this copy, using different colors to show the variations between the printed text and Montaigne’s own handwritten additions and corrections.