Shakespeare's Montaigne
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Shakespeare's Montaigne by Michel De Montaigne
An NYRB Classics OriginalShakespeare, 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.
THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE The author of the Essays was born, as he informs us himself, between eleven and twelve o'clock in the day, the last of February 1533, at the chateau of St. Michel de Montaigne. His father, Pierre Eyquem, esquire, was successively first Jurat of the town of Bordeaux (1530), Under-Mayor 1536, Jurat for the second time in 1540, Procureur in 1546, and at length Mayor from 1553 to 1556. He was a man of austere probity, who had a particular regard for honour and for propriety in his person and attire . . . a mighty good faith in his speech, and a conscience and a religious feeling inclining to superstition, rather than to the other extreme. Between 1556 and 1563 an important incident occurred in the life of Montaigne, in the commencement of his romantic friendship with Etienne de la Boetie, whom he had met, as he tells us, by pure chance at some festive celebration in the town. From their very first interview the two found themselves drawn irresistibly close to one another, and during six years this alliance was foremost in the heart of Montaigne, as it was afterwards in his memory, when death had severed it.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781590177228 |
| ISBN 10 | 1590177223 |
| Title | Shakespeare's Montaigne |
| Author | Michel De Montaigne |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The New York Review of Books, Inc |
| Year published | 2014-04-08 |
| Number of pages | 480 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |