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Michel de Montaigne

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Born: August 01 1532

Died: 1212 09 15921592

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. 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 contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to René Descartes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Stephan Zweig, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a conservative and earnest Catholic but, as a result of his anti-dogmatic cast of mind, he is considered the father, alongside his contemporary and intimate friend Étienne de La Boétie, of the "anti-conformist" tradition in French literature.

In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman then as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sais-je?" .

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 to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary nonfiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.

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Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne

Books from Michel de Montaigne

Denemeler

On Friendship

How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing

The Complete Works

On Solitude

Denemeler: Seçmeler

Сонгомол эсээнүүд

The Complete Essays of Montaigne

The Complete Works

The Essays of Montaigne - Volume 01

The Essays of Montaigne - Volume 02

I cannibali/Des cannibales

An Apology for Raymond Sebond

De la amistad (Serie Great Ideas 31)

De los libros

The World's Greatest Books, Volume 14: Philosophy and Economics

Les Essais "Des cannibales" "Des Coches" - Montaigne (Oeuvres intégrales BAC)

Von der Kunst, das Leben zu lieben

The Essays of Montaigne - Volume 04

Ensayos III