Montaigne in motion /

Starobinski is one of the foremost critics of French literature writing today. In the present work, he departs from the evolutionary view of the Essays according to which Montaigne passed successively through stoical, skeptical, and epicurean stages of thought. Originally proposed by Pierre Villey (Les Sources et l'evolution des Essais de Montaigne, Paris, 1908) and amplified by Hugo Friedrich (Montaigne, Bern, 1949) and Donald M. Frame (Montaigne's Discovery of Man, 1955), the evolutionary reading stresses periodization rather than the commingling, in each period, of different philosophical influences. Starobinski's contribution is to show the permanence, from beginning to end, of Montaigne's denunciation of the world of appearances. Traditionally a theme of moral rhetoric, this topos becomes for Montaigne the very foundation of his writing project. Starobinski begins his study by exploring Montaigne's act of ``secession,'' but shows how he returned to the world through his acceptance of the paradox of writing. In his view, the Essays' coherence lies in their oscillation, at all times, between being and appearing, and in the author's ``rhetoric of mutability,'' as seen in individual chapters on friendship, death, freedom, the body, love, language, and public life. This book is the most important contribution to Montaigne studies since Friedrich's work nearly 40 years ago and will be the critical framework in which scholars will discuss Montaigne in years to come. The translation is so natural and lively that one hardly believes it is a translation at all. Appropriate for graduate students and upper-division undergraduates.-H. Glidden, Tulane University