Montaigne
25 Apr, 2013
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Born near Bordeaux in 1533, Montaigne retired from a life of public service aged 38 and began to write. He called these short works ‘essais’, or ‘attempts’; they deal with an eclectic range of subjects, from the dauntingly weighty to the apparently trivial. Although he never considered himself a philosopher, he is often now seen as one of the most outstanding Sceptical thinkers of early modern Europe. His approachable style, intelligence and subtle thought have made him one of the most widely admired writers of the Renaissance.
Guests
- David Wootton
16 episodes
Anniversary Professor of History at York University -
Terence Cave No other episodes
Emeritus Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford -
Felicity Green No other episodes
Chancellor's Fellow in History at the University of Edinburgh
Reading list
-
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer
Sarah Bakewell (Vintage, 2011) Google Books → -
Montaigne
Peter Burke (Oxford University Press, 1981) Google Books → -
How to Read Montaigne
Terence Cave (Granta Books, 2007) Google Books → -
Montaigne
Hugo Friedrich (trans. Dawn Eng) (University of California Press, 1991) Google Books → -
Montaigne and the Life of Freedom
Felicity Green (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Google Books → -
Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England
Stephen Greenblatt (Clarendon Press, 1990) Google Books → -
The Cambridge Companion to Montaigne
Ullrich Langer (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2005) Google Books → -
Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne (trans. Charles Cotton) (Mundus Publishing, 1991) Google Books → -
The Complete Essays
Michel de Montaigne (trans. M. A. Screech) (Penguin Classics, 1993) Google Books → -
The Essays of Montaigne: A Critical Exploration
Richard Sayce (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972) Google Books → -
Montaigne and the Art of Free-Thinking
Richard Scholar (Peter Lang, 2010) Google Books → -
Montaigne and Melancholy
M. A. Screech (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000) -
Montaigne in Motion
Jean Starobinski (University of Chicago Press, 2009) Google Books → -
The Return of Martin Guerre
Natalie Zemon Davis (Harvard University Press, 1984) Google Books →
Related episodes
-
William Hazlitt
8 Apr, 2010 820 English and Old English literatures -
Edmund Burke
3 Jun, 2010 320 Political science -
Camus
3 Jan, 2008 840 French and related literatures -
Sartre
7 Oct, 2004 840 French and related literatures -
David Hume
6 Oct, 2011 100 Philosophy -
Al-Ghazali
19 Mar, 2015 210 Philosophy and theory of religion -
Socrates
27 Sep, 2007 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy -
Bergson and Time
9 May, 2019 110 Metaphysics -
Empiricism
10 Jun, 2004 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Bishop Berkeley
20 Mar, 2014 100 Philosophy -
Maimonides
17 Feb, 2011 100 Philosophy -
Al-Kindi
28 Jun, 2012 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
The Philosophy of Solitude
19 Jun, 2014 120 Epistemology -
Montesquieu
14 Jun, 2018 320 Political science -
Scepticism
5 Jul, 2012 100 Philosophy -
Bertrand Russell
6 Dec, 2012 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Common Sense Philosophy
21 Jun, 2007 100 Philosophy -
The Individual
21 Oct, 1999 100 Philosophy -
Phenomenology
22 Jan, 2015 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Pope
9 Nov, 2006 820 English and Old English literatures
Programme ID: b01s0qmj
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s0qmj
Auto-category: 800 (Literature)