Distinguo Reading Montaigne Differently

Most modern critics (even those who have emphasized the "evolution" of Montaigne's ideas) have sought to explain away the contradictions and incoherences of Montaigne's Essais . Rendall investigates the role of these internal differences in the opinions recorded, in voices and modes of discourse, in logical levels, in conceptions of writing and of reading, through a series of careful, lucid readings of selected passages of Essais . The author tracks their operation in the text and shows how Montaigne's writing constantly recontextualizes his own discourse--through his practice of interpolating new material in successive editions and adding new chapters--as well as that of other authors through quotation, paraphrase, and commentary. Rather than merely negative features, Rendall argues that such "differences" are essential to a practice of writing that both defines and challenges a notion of "unity" and can be seen as an uneasy and disturbing element related to a historical shift from earlier ways of controlling meaning to one based on "the author function." This careful and lucid book presents a fresh and significant interpretation of the Essais and shows how Montaigne's work might be read in a "different" way.