The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe : Volume Two: The Reader-Writer

This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne's Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern western university. Volume One focuses on contexts from within Montaigne's own milieu and on the ways in which his book made him a patron-author or instant classic in the eyes of his editor Marie de Gournay and his promoter Justus Lipsius. Volume Two focuses on the reader/writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works, from corrected editions and translations in print, to life-writing and personal records in manuscript. The two volumes work together to offer a new picture of the book's significance in literary and intellectual history. Montaigne's is now usually understood to be the school of late humanism or of Pyrrhonian scepticism. This study argues that the school of Montaigne potentially included everyone in early modern Europe with occasion and means to read and write for themselves and for their friends and family, unconstrained by an official function or scholastic institution. For the Essais were shaped by a battle that had intensified since the Reformation and that would continue through to the pre-Enlightenment period. It was a battle to regulate the educated individual's judgement in reading and acting upon the two books bequeathed by God to man. The book of scriptures and the book of nature were becoming more accessible through print and manuscript cultures. But at the same time that access was being mediated more intensively by teachers such as clerics and humanists, by censors and institutions, by learned authors of past and present, and by commentaries and glosses upon those authors. Montaigne enfranchised the unofficial reader-writer with liberties of judgement offered and taken in the specific historical conditions of his era. The study draws on new ways of approaching literary history through the history of the book and of reading. The Essais are treated as a mobile, transnational work that travelled from Bordeaux to Paris and beyond to markets in other countries from England and Switzerland, to Italy and the Low Countries. Close analysis of editions, paratexts, translations, and annotated copies is informed by a distinct concept of the social context of a text. The concept is derived from anthropologist Alfred Gell's notion of the "art nexus": the specific types of actions and agency relations mediated by works of art understood as "indexes" that give rise to inferences of particular kinds. Throughout the two volumes the focus is on the particular nexus in which a copy, an edition, an extract, is embedded, and on the way that nexus might be described by early modern people. --! From publisher's description Cover 1 The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe: Volume 2: The Reader-Writer 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents: Volumes 1 and 2 8 VOLUME 2 8 Acknowledgements 14 List of Illustrations: Volumes 1 and 2 20 VOLUME 1 20 Chapter 1 20 Chapter 3 21 Chapter 4 21 Chapter 5 21 Chapter 6 21 Chapter 7 22 VOLUME 2 22 Chapter 1 22 Chapter 2 23 Chapter 3 23 Chapter 4 24 Chapter 5 24 Abbreviations 26 Note on Texts, Terms, and Conventions 30 VOLUME 2: THE READER-WRITER 36 Introduction: Volume 2 38 2.1: Montaigne at Paris and Blois, 1588: La Boétie, the Essais, and the Robins 45 2.1.1 MONTAIGNE AT PARIS AND BLOIS, 1588 45 2.1.2 DE THOU AND MONTAIGNE 67 2.1.3 SAINTE-MARTHE AND DE THOU 71 2.1.4 DE THOU ON LA BOÉTIE AND MONTAIGNE 81 2.1.5 DE THOU’S HISTORIAE AT ROME 85 2.1.6 MONTAIGNE IN DE THOU’S VITA 91 2.1.7 PASQUIER’S ESSAIS 99 2.1.8 MONTAIGNE AS L’ESTOILE’S CONFESSOR 107 2.1.9 DANGERS FOR BOOKS IN CIRCULATION 114 2.2: Safe Transpassage: Geneva and Northeastern Italy 116 2.2.1 CENSORING THE ESSAIS ON THEIR TRAVELS 118 2.2.2 SECURE COMMERCEMENT 123 2.2.3 SAFE TRANSPASSAGE FROM GENEVA TO FRANCE 131 2.2.4 BOOK IN ONE HAND, PEN IN THE OTHER 137 2.2.5 THE GENEVAN EDITIONS OF 1602 143 2.2.6 WHO ALLOWED THE ESSAIS TO BE PRINTED AT GENEVA IN 1602? 151 2.2.7 GOULART AND THE ESSAIS 157 2.2.8 THE ESSAIS IN THE NORTHEASTERN ITALIAN CITY-STATES 169 2.2.9 PAOLO SARPI: THE VENETIAN SOCRATES 177 2.2.10 GIROLAMO CANINI’S SAGGI 187 2.2.11 THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF FLAVIO QUERENGHI? 199 2.2.12 MODERN RE-INVENTERS OF ETHICS 213 2.3: Learning Mingled with Nobility in Shakespeare’s England 224 2.3.1 THE PARATEXTS TO FLORIO’S MONTAIGNE 227 2.3.2 THE INSTITUTION OF THE ENGLISH NOBILITY 238 2.3.3 ‘LECTURE AND ADVISE’ 244 2.3.4 FLORIO’S ‘INSTITUTION AND EDUCATION OF CHILDREN’ 254 2.3.5 THE CHARGE OF THE TUTOR 259 2.3.6 FLORIO AND DANIEL ON STATELY VIRTUE 266 2.3.7 FROM PRIVATE READING TO PUBLIC STAGE 275 2.3.8 MONTAIGNE’S ARCADIA IN DANIEL AND SHAKESPEARE 293 2.4: Reading Montaigne and Writing Lives in the North of England and the Low Countries 307 2.4.1 WILLIAM LONDON’S CATALOGUE OF VENDIBLE BOOKS 308 2.4.2 FLORIO’S MONTAIGNE AND SIR HENRY SLINGSBY’S ‘COMMENTARIES’ 311 2.4.3 THE LIBERTY OF A SUBJECT 325 2.4.4 PIETER VAN VEEN’S COPY OF PARIS 1602 326 2.4.5 OTTO VAN VEEN’S ‘SELF-PORTRAIT WITH FAMILY’ 332 2.4.6 PIETER VAN VEEN’S MEMOIR 337 2.4.7 VAN RAVESTEYN’S PORTRAIT OF THE VAN VEENS 346 2.4.8 LES ESSAIS DE PIETER VAN VEEN 351 2.5: Recording the History of Secret Thoughts in Early Modern France 358 2.5.1 URBANE LOAFERS AND IGNORANT PSEUDOINTELLECTUALS 358 2.5.2 THE AFFRANCHISSEMENT OF AMATEUR READER-WRITERS 361 2.5.3 L’ESTOILE AND THE REGISTRE 368 2.5.4 L’ESTOILE’S LIFE OF READING AND WRITING 371 2.5.5 L’ESTOILE AND DOMESTIC RECORD-KEEPING IN ESSAIS I 34 383 2.5.6 MONTAIGNE ON THE MANTELPIECE IN RHEIMS 388 2.5.7 CODA: MONTAIGNE MIGRATES TO ENGLAND 401 2.6: The Essais Framed for Modern Intellectual Life 407 2.6.1 MONTAIGNE EXPLAINS HIMSELF IN 1946 407 2.6.2 GERMAN IDEALISM AND THE MODERN MONTAIGNE 411 2.6.3 BURCKHARDT’S INNER MAN 414 2.6.4 AFTER BURCKHARDT 415 2.6.5 VIDAL AS READER-WRITER OF THE ESSAYS, 1992 420 2.6.6 DENBY READS FRAME’S MONTAIGNE, 1992 421 2.6.7 INDEXING CRITICAL AGENCY 424 2.6.8 THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF MONTAIGNE 427 2.6.9 MONTAIGNE AND THE MODERN CRITICAL AGENT 430 2.6.10 THE POSTMODERN MONTAIGNE 432 2.7: Epilogue: Enfranchising the Reader-Writer in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe 435 2.7.1 AUERBACH’S MONTAIGNE 436 2.7.2 NEXUSES IN THE HISTORY OF THE ESSAIS 440 2.7.3 BISHOP CAMUS ON THE ESSAIS 446 2.7.4 TWO COPIES OF PARIS 1602 453 2.7.5 L’ESTOILE AND CHARRON 460 2.7.6 PIERRE BAYLE’S MONTAIGNE 468 2.7.7 L’ESTOILE AND THE ESSAIS AS REGISTRE 471 2.7.8 THE AGE OF LEARNING AND THE LEARNED BOOK 476 2.7.9 ENFRANCHISING THE READER-WRITER 485 2.7.10 THE ESSAIS BENEATH THE BATTLE 494 2.7.11 HOW CAN A BOOK BE FREE FROM SERVITUDE? 498 Conclusion 503 Bibliography 508 A. MANUSCRIPT AND ARCHIVAL SOURCES (INCLUDING UNIQUE COPIES OF PRINTED BOOKS) 508 B. PRINTED AND OTHER SOURCES 510 Index 542 This Major Two-volume Study Offers An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of Montaigne's Essais And Their Fortunes In Early Modern Europe And The Modern Western University. Volume One Focuses On Contexts From Within Montaigne's Own Milieu, And On The Ways In Which His Book Made Him A Patron-author Or Instant Classic In The Eyes Of His Editor Marie De Gournay And His Promoter Justus Lipsius. Volume Two Focuses On The Reader-writers Across Europe Who Used The Essais To Make Their Own Works, From Corrected Editions And Translations In Print, To Life-writing And Personal Records In Manuscript. V. 1. The Patron-author -- V.2. The Reader-writer. Warren Boutcher. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes. The second volume of a major two-volume study of the fortunes of Michel de Montaigne's Essais in both the early-modern (1580-1725) and the modern period (1900-2000). Volume two focuses on the reader-writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works.