Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare
Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare

Author: Peter Mack

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1849660603

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This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Shakespare and Montaigne are the English and French writers of the sixteenth century who have the most to say to modern readers. Shakespeare certainly drew on Montaigne's essay 'On Cannibals' in writing The Tempest and debates have raged amongst scholars about the playwright's obligations to Montaigne in passages from earlier plays including Hamlet, King Lear and Measure for Measure. Peter Mack argues that rather than continuing the undeterminable quarrel about how early in his career Shakespeare came to Montaigne, we should focus on the similar techniques they apply to shared sources. Grammar school education in the sixteenth century placed a special emphasis on reading classical texts in order to reuse both the ideas and the rhetoric. This book examines the ways in which Montaigne and Shakespeare used their reading and argued with it to create something new. It is the most sustained account available of the similarities and differences between these two great writers, casting light on their ethical and philosophical views and on how these were conveyed to their audience.

Shakespeare's Essays
Shakespeare's Essays

Author: Platt Peter G. Platt

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2020-07-31

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1474463436

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Argues that the Essais of Montaigne were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean dramaA new way of accounting for the different sorts of plays that Shakespeare wrote later in his careerA detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection, from the eighteenth century to the present dayCase studies that, through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, shows the shared concerns of the authorsA new approach that differs from the more typical method of looking merely for verbal echoes, resulting in a deeper, richer sense of the way that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne shaped his writingIn this revisionist study, Peter G. Platt provides a detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection from the eighteenth century to the present day. Through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives. While the change in monarchy, the revived interest in judicial rhetoric and the alterations in Shakespeare's acting company helped shape plays such as Measure for Measure, King Lear and The Tempest, this book contends that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne is an under-recognised driving force in these later plays.

Shakespeare's Montaigne
Shakespeare's Montaigne

Author: Michel de Montaigne

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1590177347

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An NYRB Classics Original Shakespeare, 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.

Montaigne's English Journey
Montaigne's English Journey

Author: William M. Hamlin

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-11-14

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0191507024

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Montaigne's English Journey examines the genesis, early readership, and multifaceted impact of John Florio's exuberant translation of Michel de Montaigne's Essays. Published in London in 1603, this book was widely read in seventeenth-century England: Shakespeare borrowed from it as he drafted King Lear and The Tempest, and many hundreds of English men and women first encountered Montaigne's tolerant outlook and disarming candour in its densely-printed pages. Literary historians have long been fascinated by the influence of Florio's translation, analysing its contributions to the development of the English essay and tracing its appropriation in the work of Webster, Dryden, and other major writers. William M. Hamlin, by contrast, undertakes an exploration of Florio's Montaigne within the overlapping realms of print and manuscript culture, assessing its importance from the varied perspectives of its earliest English readers. Drawing on letters, diaries, commonplace books, and thousands of marginal annotations inscribed in surviving copies of Florio's volume, Hamlin offers a comprehensive account of the transmission and reception of Montaigne in seventeenth-century England. In particular he focuses on topics that consistently intrigued Montaigne's English readers: sexuality, marriage, conscience, theatricality, scepticism, self-presentation, the nature of wisdom, and the power of custom. All in all, Hamlin's study constitutes a major contribution to investigations of literary readership in pre-Enlightenment Europe.

Rhetoric's Questions, Reading and Interpretation
Rhetoric's Questions, Reading and Interpretation

Author: Peter Mack

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-08-20

Total Pages: 119

ISBN-13: 331960158X

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This book aims to help readers interpret, and reflect on, their reading more effectively. It presents doctrines of ancient and renaissance rhetoric (an education in how to write well) as questions or categories for interpreting one’s reading. The first chapter presents the questions. Later chapters use rhetorical theory to bring out the implications of, and suggest possible answers to, the questions: about occasion and audience (chapter 2), structure and disposition (3), narrative (4), argument (5), further elements of content, such as descriptions, comparisons, proverbs and moral axioms, dialogue, and examples (6), and style (7). Chapter eight describes ways of gathering material, formulating arguments and writing about the texts one reads. The conclusion considers the wider implications of taking a rhetorical approach to reading. The investigation of rhetoric’s questions is interspersed with analyses of texts by Chaucer, Sidney, Shakespeare, Fielding and Rushdie, using the questions. The text is intended for university students of literature, especially English literature, and rhetoric, and their teachers.

Shakspere and Montaigne
Shakspere and Montaigne

Author: Jacob Feis

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2019-12-09

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13:

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"Shakspere and Montaigne" is a literary work by Jacob Feis that examines the relationship between Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and the works of the French essayist Michel de Montaigne. The book explores the influence of Montaigne's ideas on Shakespeare's writing and argues that "Hamlet" was shaped by the cultural and intellectual trends of its time.

Montaigne and Shakespeare, and Other Essays on Cognate Questions
Montaigne and Shakespeare, and Other Essays on Cognate Questions

Author: J M 1856-1933 Robertson

Publisher: Legare Street Press

Published: 2023-07-18

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781022208582

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In this collection of essays, J. M. Robertson explores the connections between the works of Michel de Montaigne and William Shakespeare, two of the most influential writers of the Renaissance era. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of literature, philosophy, and history, Robertson sheds light on the achievements and limitations of these great authors. He also discusses a range of related topics, including the evolution of English prose and the role of skepticism in modern thought. A fascinating read for anyone interested in literary criticism or cultural history. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.