Essaying Montaigne : a study of the Renaissance institution of writing and reading / / John O'Neill [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910782581003321
• Autore: O'Neill John <1933-2022, >
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Liverpool : , : Liverpool University Press, , 2001
• ISBN: 1-78138-647-1; 1-84631-305-8
• Edizione: [Second edition.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (viii, 264 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Collana: Studies in social and political thought ; ; 5
• Disciplina: 844.3
• Soggetti: Authors and readers - France - History - 16th century; Books and reading - France - History - 16th century; French essays - History and criticism; Renaissance - France
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Aug 2017).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-260) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Society and Self-study: the Problem of Literary Authority -- Literary Anxiety and the Romance of Books -- Rival Readings -- Writing and Embodiment -- Reading and Temperament -- The Paradox of Communication: Reading the Essays Otherwise -- Portrait of the Essayist Without Qualities -- On Public and Private Life -- Civilisation, Literacy and Barbarism -- On Living and Dying as We Do.
• Sommario/riassunto: John O'Neill reads Montaigne's Essays from their central principle of friendship as a communicative and pedagogical practice operative in society, literature and politics. The friendship between Montaigne and La Boétie was ruled neither by plenitude nor lack but by a capacity for recognition and transitivity. As an essayist Montaigne is an exemplary practitioner of a technique of difference and recognition that puts all certainties of history, philosophy and culture in the balance of weighted comparison. The essayist reveals how every absolute subjectivity or authority is shaken by its internal weakness once we move inside the contrastive structure of domination in politics, gender and race. O'Neill's reading of the Essays strives to be faithful to the phenomenology of their embodied practices of reading-to-write-to re-read and re-write. From this standpoint he engages the principal ; critical readings of the Essays over the last century that have examined with great brilliance their history, structure and psychology. Whether the structure is evolutionary, structuralist, Marxist or psychoanalytical, O'Neill provides close readings of Montaigne's literary critics. By bringing to bear the ethico-critical practice of 'essaying' to resist the subjection of the Essays to dominant criticism, O'Neill reminds readers that Montaigne's appeal is in how he survived bloody cultural war with a balance of modesty and tolerance, invoking compromise where others practice violence.