Overview

""When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. And when I am walking alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are sometimes preoccupied elsewhere, the rest of the time I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me."" --""Montaigne"" In the year 1570, """"at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne gave up his job as a magistrate and retired to his chateau to brood on his own private grief--the deaths of his best friend, his father, his brother, and his firstborn child. On the ceiling of his library he inscribed a phrase from the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius: ""There is no new pleasure to be gained by living longer."" But finding his mind agitated rather than settled by this idleness, Montaigne began to write, giving birth to the ""Essays""--short prose explorations of an amazingly wide range of subjects. And gradually, over the course of his writing, Montaigne rejected his stoical pessimism and turned from a philosophy of death to a philosophy of life. He erased Lucretius's melancholy fatalism and began to embrace the exuberant vitality of living, finding an antidote to death in the most unlikely places--the touch of a hand, the smell of his doublet, the playfulness of his cat, and the flavor of his wine. Saul Frampton offers a celebration of perhaps the most enjoyable and yet profound of all Renaissance writers, whose essays went on to have a huge impact on figures as diverse as Shakespeare, Emerson, and Orson Welles, and whose thoughts, even today, offer a guide and unprecedented insight into the simple matter of being alive.

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9780375424717

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With deceptive casualness, Frampton renders a rigorous history of ideas in this engaging account of the life and the work of Michel de Montaigne . . . His extraordinary achievement is in conveying--and inviting the reader to commune with--Montaigne's unique sensibility and his take on death, sex, travel, friendship, kidney stones, the human thumb, and above all, 'the power of the ordinary and the unremarkable, the value of the here-and-now' . . . This scholarly romp through the Renaissance is a jewel. @lt;br@gt;@lt;b@gt;--@lt;/b@gt;@lt;i@gt;Publishers Weekly@lt;b@gt;@lt;/b@gt;@lt;/i@gt;(starred review)

In Montaigne's intense self-absorption, Frampton discerns the rich literary fruit of a stunning midlife volte-face . . . Frampton underscores the essential humaneness of Montaigne's life . . . Recognizing the twenty-first century's own need for advocates of life-affirming tolerance, readers will embrace this insightful portrait. @lt;br@gt;--Bryce Christensen, @lt;i@gt;Booklist @lt;/i@gt;(starred review)@lt;br@gt;@lt;br@gt; Ingenious . . . Passionately written and full to bursting with digressions and anecdotes, Frampton's book does an excellent job of bringing Montaigne and his historical context to life. It is this vivid evocation of the time that emerges as the book's greatest strength. We see how the philosopher's celebration of daily life . . . went against not only the dominant philosophical currents of the day but also the violent upheavals of 16th-century France. What comes through the strongest is an inspiring sense of the philosopher's remarkable independence of thought and e

Author Information

Saul Frampton studied English and philosophy at the University of East Anglia, wrote a doctorate on Renaissance literature at Oxford, and was a research fellow at Cambridge. He lives in Hove on the Sussex coast.

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