Shakespeare's Montaigne

Shakespeare's Montaigne PDF Author: Michel de Montaigne
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590177347
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
An NYRB Classics Original Shakespeare, Nietzsche wrote, was Montaigne’s best reader—a typically brilliant Nietzschean insight, capturing the intimate relationship between Montaigne’s ever-changing record of the self and Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic register of human character. And there is no doubt that Shakespeare read Montaigne—though how extensively remains a matter of debate—and that the translation he read him in was that of John Florio, a fascinating polymath, man-about-town, and dazzlingly inventive writer himself. Florio’s Montaigne is in fact one of the masterpieces of English prose, with a stylistic range and felicity and passages of deep lingering music that make it comparable to Sir Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the works of Sir Thomas Browne. This new edition of this seminal work, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Peter G. Platt, features an adroitly modernized text, an essay in which Greenblatt discusses both the resemblances and real tensions between Montaigne’s and Shakespeare’s visions of the world, and Platt’s introduction to the life and times of the extraordinary Florio. Altogether, this book provides a remarkable new experience of not just two but three great writers who ushered in the modern world.

Shakespeare's Essays

Shakespeare's Essays PDF Author: Platt Peter G. Platt
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474463436
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
Argues that the Essais of Montaigne were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean dramaA new way of accounting for the different sorts of plays that Shakespeare wrote later in his careerA detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection, from the eighteenth century to the present dayCase studies that, through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, shows the shared concerns of the authorsA new approach that differs from the more typical method of looking merely for verbal echoes, resulting in a deeper, richer sense of the way that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne shaped his writingIn this revisionist study, Peter G. Platt provides a detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection from the eighteenth century to the present day. Through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives. While the change in monarchy, the revived interest in judicial rhetoric and the alterations in Shakespeare's acting company helped shape plays such as Measure for Measure, King Lear and The Tempest, this book contends that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne is an under-recognised driving force in these later plays.

How to Live

How to Live PDF Author: Sarah Bakewell
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590514262
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them “essays,” meaning “attempts” or “tries.” Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment—and in search of themselves. This book, a spirited and singular biography, relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing, youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Étienne de La Boétie and with his adopted “daughter,” Marie de Gournay. And we also meet his readers—who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, “how to live?”

The Image of America in Montaigne, Spenser and Shakespeare

The Image of America in Montaigne, Spenser and Shakespeare PDF Author: William M. Hamlin
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312125066
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
The Image of America in Montaigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare examines selected works of three major Renaissance writers within the context of early modern ethnographic discourse. In a series of imaginative and detailed discussions, William M. Hamlin explores the ways in which Renaissance ideas of savagery and civility evolved during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This evolution was a consequence, in part, of the fascinating and complex interaction between ethnographic reportage and literary representation. Hamlin begins his discussion by arguing that all forms of ethnography or historiography are inevitably assimilative constructs. By examining early ethnographic writings of such authors as Columbus, Martyr, Las Casas, Lery, Duran, and Sahagun he shows how sixteenth-century thought moved gradually toward the recognition of difference in equality - a recognition championed above all by Montaigne. Like Montaigne's, Spenser's thought balanced natural sufficiency with sociocultural sophistication, and thus revealed an implicit awareness of the interpenetration of the concepts of savagery and civility. This interpenetration was further explored by Shakespeare, particularly in The Tempest and King Lear. Hamlin characterizes The Tempest's pastoralism as Montaignian, and argues in conclusion that the interconnectedness of concepts of nature and culture in the writings of Montaigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare suggests the extent to which New World awareness in Renaissance Europe effected a partial erasure and reconstitution of Old World patterns of thought.

Montaigne's English Journey

Montaigne's English Journey PDF Author: William M. Hamlin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191507024
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
Montaigne's English Journey examines the genesis, early readership, and multifaceted impact of John Florio's exuberant translation of Michel de Montaigne's Essays. Published in London in 1603, this book was widely read in seventeenth-century England: Shakespeare borrowed from it as he drafted King Lear and The Tempest, and many hundreds of English men and women first encountered Montaigne's tolerant outlook and disarming candour in its densely-printed pages. Literary historians have long been fascinated by the influence of Florio's translation, analysing its contributions to the development of the English essay and tracing its appropriation in the work of Webster, Dryden, and other major writers. William M. Hamlin, by contrast, undertakes an exploration of Florio's Montaigne within the overlapping realms of print and manuscript culture, assessing its importance from the varied perspectives of its earliest English readers. Drawing on letters, diaries, commonplace books, and thousands of marginal annotations inscribed in surviving copies of Florio's volume, Hamlin offers a comprehensive account of the transmission and reception of Montaigne in seventeenth-century England. In particular he focuses on topics that consistently intrigued Montaigne's English readers: sexuality, marriage, conscience, theatricality, scepticism, self-presentation, the nature of wisdom, and the power of custom. All in all, Hamlin's study constitutes a major contribution to investigations of literary readership in pre-Enlightenment Europe.

Montaigne

Montaigne PDF Author: Stefan Zweig
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1782271465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
Written during the Second World War, Zweig's typically passionate and readable biography of Michel de Montaigne, is also a heartfelt argument for the importance of intellectual freedom, tolerance and humanism. Zweig draws strong parallels between Montaigne's age, when Europe was torn in two by conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, and his own, in which the twin fanaticisms of Fascism and Communism were on the verge of destroying the pan-continental liberal culture he was born into, and loved dearly. Just as Montaigne sought to remain aloof from the factionalism of his day, so Zweig tried to the last to defend his freedom of thought, and argue for peace and compromise. One of the final works Zweig wrote before his suicide, this is both a brilliantly impassioned portrait of a great mind, and a moving plea for tolerance in a world ruled by cruelty.

Special Section, Shakespeare and Montaigne Revisited

Special Section, Shakespeare and Montaigne Revisited PDF Author: Graham Bradshaw
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754655893
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 980

Book Description
This year including a special section on "Shakespeare and Montaigne Revisited," The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Contributors to this issue come from the US and the UK, Canada, Sweden, Japan and Australia. This issue includes an interview with veteran American actor Alvin Epstein during his recent acclaimed performance of King Lear for the Actors' Shakespeare project in Boston.

Shakespeare's Philosophy

Shakespeare's Philosophy PDF Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060856157
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Shakespeare's plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here, into six of Shakespeare's greatest plays—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest. In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare's philosophy of life and illustrates how he was influenced, for example, by the essays of Montaigne that were translated into English while Shakespeare was writing. In addition to chapters on the great plays, there are also essays on Shakespeare and gender and his plays from the aspects of psychology, ethics, and tragedy. As McGinn says about Shakespeare, "There is not a sentimental bone in his body. He has the curiosity of a scientist, the judgement of a philosopher, and the soul of a poet." McGinn relates the ideas in the plays to the later philosophers such as David Hume and the modern commentaries of critics such as Harold Bloom. The book is an exhilarating reading experience, especially at a time when a new audience has opened up for the greatest writer in English.

Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare

Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare PDF Author: Peter Mack
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1849660603
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Shakespare and Montaigne are the English and French writers of the sixteenth century who have the most to say to modern readers. Shakespeare certainly drew on Montaigne's essay 'On Cannibals' in writing The Tempest and debates have raged amongst scholars about the playwright's obligations to Montaigne in passages from earlier plays including Hamlet, King Lear and Measure for Measure. Peter Mack argues that rather than continuing the undeterminable quarrel about how early in his career Shakespeare came to Montaigne, we should focus on the similar techniques they apply to shared sources. Grammar school education in the sixteenth century placed a special emphasis on reading classical texts in order to reuse both the ideas and the rhetoric. This book examines the ways in which Montaigne and Shakespeare used their reading and argued with it to create something new. It is the most sustained account available of the similarities and differences between these two great writers, casting light on their ethical and philosophical views and on how these were conveyed to their audience.
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