Distinguo

Most modern critics have sought to explain away the contradictions and discontinuities in Montaigne's Essais. Steven Rendall maintains that such differences--in the opinions recorded, in voices and modes of discourse, in logical levels, in conceptions of writing and reading--are essential to Montaigne's practice of writing. In a series of lucid readings of selected passages from the Essais, Rendall tracks the operation of these differences, showing how Montaigne's writing constantly recontextualizes his own discourse as well as that of other authors. But Montaigne also recognizes that the procedures of recontextualization on which he relies pose a threat to his control over his own text. The author argues that Montaigne's description of the Essais as a 'self-portrait' is an attempt to ward off this threat, and situates it in relation to a historical shift from earlier ways of controlling meaning to one based on 'the author function'.

Through a series of readings of selected passages, this book explores the role of contradiction and incoherence in Montaigne's "Essais". The author argues that such internal differences are essential to a practice of writing that both defines and challenges the ideology of unity.

Introduction - reading differently, "Montaigne etait-il divers et ondoyant?" difference in the text; distinguo - "par divere moyens on arrive a pareille fin", "de 1'inconstance de nos actions", "de l'experience"; voices - who's speaking, changing the subject, the voice of nature, masks and voices; appropriation - property, "De l'institution des infans", reading and writing, expropriation, the prodigal text, fama, the menace of interpretation, ideal readers; faces - the portrait of the author, physiognomy, self-portraiture; conclusions - appendices, shame, memory and repents, endings.