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Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics) Paperback – September 7, 1993

by Michel de Montaigne (Author), M. A. Screech (Editor, Translator, Introduction)

4.6 576 ratings

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Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Essays is translated from the French and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech. In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays', inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers. With its extensive introduction and notes, M.A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1586) studied law and spent a number of years working as a counsellor before devoting his life to reading, writing and reflection. If you enjoyed The Complete Essays, you might like Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Screech's fine version ... must surely serve as the definitive English Montaigne' A.C. Grayling, Financial Times 'A superb edition' Nicholas Wollaston, Observer

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in 1533, Montaigne studied law and spent a number of years working as a counsellor before devoting his life to reading, writing and reflection. He died in 1586. Dr M.A. Screech is regarded as the world's greatest authority on Montaigne.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0140446044
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (September 7, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1344 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780140446043
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140446043
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.76 x 5.14 x 2.41 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #43,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Renaissance Western Philosophy
- #109 in Essays (Books)
- #3,527 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Charlie

A stroll in the 16th century

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2017

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The subject of this book is Michel de Montaigne, a 16th century frenchman, famous for writing this book. The topics he covers range from the wisdom of the ancient philosophers to everyday nuisances present in the life of the late 16th century. The overriding theme throughout is his focus on himself, the only subject he is sure that he knows better than anyone else. This book is valuable because he writes about subjects that are still relevant to today, over 400 years later, and will continue to be relevant throughout man's history to come. He asks questions that every human finds himself asking at some point. He focuses on ethics and theology and the human soul, and much more.

His writing style is relaxing and candid. The book is broken up into numerous seemingly disjointed sections and can be read for 10 minutes or a couple hours at a time. Montaigne writes in a friendly tone but also covers plenty of serious subjects. This book is unique in providing what life was like for one man who lived over four centuries ago.

25 people found this helpful

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GoodEnuf

I did not look at the page count before ordering

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2023

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When you're in the 1500s and you devote your life to reading writing and reflection as a upper class person I guess you can literally write a tome about living life. This book is huge. Are you sure they aren't missing any other essays?

I'm not a stranger to longer reads but I guess I was getting used to abbreviated texts that seem more brief. . .

Just be aware. I find it funny that the older the readings generally the larger the book. Good luck

6 people found this helpful

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KO6JW

Excellent translation.

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2016

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I have three translations of Montaigne - Cotton, Frame (this one) and Screech (no kidding). The Cotton translation was done in the late 18th century and is some what difficult to read. Frame was done in the 1950's and is very readable. Screech is more recent and is also quite readable. Frame simply translates Montaigne's frequent Latin quotes whereas Screech presents the Latin along with the translation. While this may be more scholarly, it is distracting if you don't read Latin.

The Frame volume includes other works by Montaigne such as his travel journals. Thus, it is more complete than either Cotton or Screech. This volume is over 1300 pages and is not very portable. Still I recommend it as being more complete and a little more readable.

118 people found this helpful

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Leon A Le Leu

Unrestrained de Montaigne

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2015

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De Montaigne, in his chateau tower (his wife occupied the other tower), felt complete freedom in writing whatever he thought about anything. He was not restrained by religion, popular ideas on decency, or anything much. Hence most of his writing is as refreshing as it may have been the day it was written. It would be trite to call him a thoroughly modern man but you feel that as he is "speaking" to you over more than four and a half centuries. Yet he would have little time for much of what is covered by the word "modern" these days. It has been one of my better purchases over the last few months.

24 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Putting Philosphy into Everyday Language

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2019

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Wish I had known about Montaigne and that I had been familiar with his intriguing essays years ago, although I probably wouldn't have appreciated them as much then as I do now. Takes all the Greek and Roman philosophers off their pedestals and makes them human, warts and all, but nevertheless, as fallible, makes them more worthy of their reputations. And Montaigne puts human mannerisms and current daily life, which, it turns out was just as current throughout history, in a current philosophical setting. Fun reading while trying sometimes to figure out his expressions and writing style and is especially interesting with a good Kindle dictionary close at hand to decipher words and their meanings that are antiquated. Extracting his thoughts from his convoluted but poetic writing style is a great exercise in perseverance, and gives me the satisfaction of solving a puzzle.

8 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

How To Live

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2023

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Before reading Montaigne's Essays, I completed reading an extraordinary biography of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell. The title is "How To Live." For a biography, it has an unusual organization. There are twenty chapters and each chapter presents a different answer to the question "How to live." Along the way Montaigne's life story is presented. Reading "How To Live" first and then reading this New Pleiade edition of Montaigne's Essays has been a life changing experience!

18 people found this helpful

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Constant Reader

Michael de Montaigne - The Complete Essays: A Review

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2013

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There are other editions of Montaigne's complete essays and each has its virtues. I prefer this one. The editor, M.A. Screech, is a thoughtful and thorough scholar with straight forward writing style. The text contains all the little emendations that Montaigne added as the years went by and new editions were published. From my point of view, it's an ideal edition. Of course, I do NOT recommend this to anyone who isn't familiar with Montaigne, because there's simply too much here for the beginner. I suggest starting with a selection from his essays or, if you insist on diving in, read first his Defense of Raymond Sebond.

9 people found this helpful

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YJ

great value

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2010

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I have read the complete essays in Chinese before, so I know I would have great joy reading it again in English. Although you may get it free on Kindle, I prefer the bulky and serious feeling of a printed book. It's only $16.5, but wisdom contained in the book is undoubtedly invaluable.

Plus, the printing quality is awesome. Before the book was shipped to me, I was worrying the font was too small. Turns out the font is just the right size. It's certainly not a big font, but since they use single line space, you can still read the book without any eye strain. ( i have a Penguin Popular Classics of Wuthering Heights, which has terrible printing quality. But this is Penguin Classics--truly classic )

Can't love it more.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

imfromdreamtime

Dive In To a Beautiful Mind

Reviewed in Canada on June 20, 2019

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Clive James says somewhere that certain people throughout history are like ambassadors from the present stationed in the past: though separated from us by centuries, to read them is to share in thoughts and feelings that we recognise intimately as our own. And this is what Montaigne has been for me since I started reading him several years ago. He is the first person in history who strikes me as modern – or at least, the first to put that modern sense of uncertainty and existential nerviness down on paper, to write something that is not didactic or improving or even purely entertaining, but animated instead by curiosity, doubt, overeducated boredom, trivial irritations.

The scepticism in particular has become probably his most famous quality – his best-known line nowadays is the rhetorical question, Que sçay-je? ‘What do I know?’ Certainly his essays – meaning ‘efforts’, ‘attempts’ – are endearingly open about how uncertain he is when it comes to any of the big questions. He doesn't bluster his way through his lack of knowledge, but faces it head-on with disarming cheerfulness, and his arguments themselves are not carefully structured means to approach knowledge, but rather meandering and conversational in a way that is completely unlike other writers of the time. Je parle au papier comme je parle au premier que je rencontre, he says – in John Florio's 1603 translation (on which much more later), ‘I speake unto Paper, as to the first man I meete.’ Still, his lack of expertise is something that regularly bothers him:

Est-ce pas faire une muraille sans pierre, ou chose semblable, que de bastir des livres sans science et sans art? Les fantasies de la musique sont conduictes par art, les miennes par sort.

To write bookes without learning is it not to make a wall without stone or such like thing? Conceits of musicke are directed by arte, mine by hap.

It's unlikely to worry any of his readers. The range of topics addressed by Montaigne is gloriously all-encompassing: stick a pin in the nearest encyclopaedia and he will have something to say on whatever subject has been thus perforated. And crucially, it's not just the big subjects like war, religion, diplomacy, the Classical tradition. It's also the minor stuff, the kind of things that you worry about in the bath – how annoying it is to have to get up early, whether people should talk over dinner or just shut up and eat, what to wear in bed. Like men through history, he frets that he can't last long enough during sex and that his cock is too small – but unlike Horace or the Earl of Rochester, he doesn't write grandiose poetry on the subject, he just moans about it in humdrum, day-to-day prose. You come to realise there is no issue he won't write about. ‘Of all naturall actions, there is none wherein I am more loath to be troubled or interrupted when I am at it,’ he announces, on doing a poo.

Of course that frankness, that ruthless self-analysis, means that when he does come to the big subjects he's often totally riveting. I loved reading his thoughts on religion, which are incredibly undogmatic and open-minded given the context of sixteenth-century Europe. In Book II, chapter 12 – one of the longest essays and often printed separately – he ostensibly sets out to defend Christianity, but in his clear-sighted assessment of the arguments against religion he articulates intelligent agnosticism better than many atheists. We are Christians because we are born here and now, he perceives; if people really believed in the precepts of their faith, they would be happy to die; and if there were any real reward after death it must be in some mortal way, otherwise we would no longer be ‘us’. Following his mind through these arguments is quite a thrill.

He also comments on current events, of all kinds. After France adopts the Gregorian calendar in December 1582, he takes the time to write irritably on the missing eleven days (a circumstance which leads him, via a typically Montanian series of tangents, to end up discussing the merits of sex with the disabled). And his thoughts on the Spanish conquest of the Americas – the full details of which were still then emerging – make for a welcome reminder that not everyone at the time was gung-ho about the excesses of the colonial project.

…nous nous sommes servis de leur ignorance et inexperience à les plier plus facilement vers la trahison, luxure, avarice et vers toute sorte d'inhumanité et de cruauté, à l'exemple et patron de nos meurs. Qui mit jamais à tel pris le service de la mercadence et de la trafique? Tant de villes rasées, tant de nations exterminées, tant de millions de peuples passez au fil de l'espée, et la plus riche et belle partie du monde bouleversée pour la negotiation des perles et du poivre: mechaniques victoires. Jamais l'ambition, jamais les inimitiez publiques ne pousserent les hommes les uns contre les autres à si horribles hostilitez et calamitez si miserables.

we have made use of their ignorance and inexperience, to drawe them more easily unto treason, fraude, luxurie, avarice and all manner of inhumanity and cruelty, by the example of our life and patterne of our customes. Who ever raised the service of marchandize and benefit of traffick to so high a rate? So many goodly citties ransacked and raged; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmelesse people of all sexes, states and ages, massacred, ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest and the best part of the world topsiturvied, ruined and defaced for the traffick of Pearles and Pepper. Oh mechanicall victories, oh base conquest. Never did greedy revenge, publik wrongs or generall enmities, so moodily enrage and so passionately incense men against men, unto so horrible hostilities, bloody dissipation, and miserable calamities.

On gender relations he offers an intriguing mix of traditionalism and forward-thinking. He makes frequent off-hand remarks about the place of women which seem to suggest that he is pretty representative of his time – commenting, for instance, that if women want to read they should confine themselves to theology and a little poetry – but then at other times he can be amazingly progressive. A long essay ‘On some verses of Virgil’ (III.5) includes a fantastic investigation of sexual politics where he is unexpectedly thoughtful about the expectations placed on women by male society, and he rails against the hypocrisy of what we'd now call slut-shaming. His sympathy for those who do not fit patriarchal expectations shows that he grasps the fundamental point:

Les femmes n'ont pas tort du tout quand elles refusent les reigles de vie qui sont introduites au monde, d'autant que ce sont les hommes qui les ont faictes sans elles.

Women are not altogether in the wrong, when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, forsomuch as onely men have established them without their consent.

In the end, although he can't stop himself feeling instinctively that a woman's role is different from a man's, he recognises that much of this is down to social pressures, and his simple conclusion is in some ways centuries ahead of its time: les masles et femelles sont jettez en mesme moule: sauf l'institution et l'usage, la difference n'y est pas grande. ‘Male and female are cast in one same moulde; instruction and custome excepted, there is no great difference betweene them.’

Those of you who read French may be noticing here that Montaigne is often easier to understand than Florio. At first this was a surprise to me as I flicked between them, but it's a good illustration of the fact that English has changed a lot more in four hundred years than French has. Many were the times that I turned to the Middle French to illuminate what seemed an obscure passage in my native language. A Florio phrase like ‘it is enough to dip our pens in inke, too much, to die them in blood’ seems to have two or three possible interpretations. It's only when you read the original – c'est assez de tramper nos plumes en ancre, sans les tramper en sang – that you realise Florio's first comma is the fulcrum on which two perfectly-balanced halves of the sentence pivot.

Take another look at the very end of that quote on the conquest of Mexico, above. Montaigne's elegant chiasmus (horribles hostilitez…calamitez si miserables) has been abandoned; meanwhile, to the horrible hostilities and miserable calamities has been added a dose of ‘bloody dissipation’, on Florio's own initiative. Similar cases abound (he also translates bouleversée there as ‘topsiturvied’!), and to me they say something deeply significant about the two languages, at least as they existed then. One final example will make my point: here, Montaigne is discussing how strange it is that sex is something hidden and shameful, while death is a public glory:

Chacun fuit à le voir naistre, chacun suit à le voir mourir. Pour le destruire, on cerche un champ spacieux en pleine lumiere; pour le construire, on se musse dans un creux tenebreux et contraint. C'est le devoir de se cacher et rougir pour le faire; et c'est gloire, et naissent plusieurs vertus de le sçavoir deffaire.

Each one avoideth to see a man borne, but all runne hastily to see him dye. To destroy him we seeke a spacious field and a full light, but to construct him we hide our selves in some darke corner and worke as close as we may. It is our dutie to conceale our selves in making him; it is our glory, and the originall of many vertues to destroy him being framed.

The French is precisely assembled, and Florio ignores the precision entirely. Montaigne's exact, rhyming counterpoints (chacun fuit…chacun suit, faire…deffaire) are dropped in favour of a profusion of circumlocution (‘each one avoideth…all runne’, ‘making him…to destroy him being framed’). Where Montaigne is a Rolls-Royce engine, Florio is a cartoon jetpack. And yet! Where Florio fails to capture his source is precisely where he best represents the allusive, poly-synonymous essence of his own native tradition. While Montaigne convinces you that the genius of French lies in its clarity (Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français, as Antoine de Rivarol would say two hundred years later), Florio suggests that the genius of English lies by contrast in its ambiguity, and the best English writers of the time – which is to say the best English writers of all time, Shakespeare, Browne et al. – were precisely those who mastered its allusive and multivocabular messiness.

Well, I won't push that any further, and Montaigne himself would doubtless have disagreed. (‘Our speech hath his infirmities and defects, as all things else have,’ he says; and elsewhere, in a passage that warmed my anti-prescriptivist heart, ‘According to the continuall variation that hitherto hath followed our French tongue, who may hope that its present forme shall be in use fifty yeares hence?…We say it is now come to a full perfection. There is no age but saith as much of hirs.’) At any rate, reading these two writers together throws up all kinds of fascinating suggestions and contemplations, and it meant that I ended up reading basically all the essays twice (and two or three of them I read for a third time in MA Screech's modern English translation). For those curious about Florio, the NYRB has published a selection of his versions of the Essays under the intensely irritating title of Shakespeare's Montaigne, though neither Montaigne nor Florio need Shakespeare's coat-tails to ride on – and anyway, apart from one famous bit in The Tempest, the evidence for Shakespeare's having read Florio is not very exciting.

In the end though, whatever language you read Montaigne in, his humaneness and his sympathy will stay with you. By the time he writes the final volume he is at the end of his life, and his tone has not become bitter or regretful in the least. Everywhere he shows a desire to find a middle way between the intellectual and the physical, the elevated and the practical, which I find extremely cheering. The last chapter, ‘On Experience’, sums up the feelings about how life should be lived that he has been investigating throughout the essays, and as always his concern is not to criticise but instead to forgive, to understand, to encourage. He invented an entire genre, but no one has achieved greater effects with it than he did himself.

Il a passé sa vie en oisiveté, disons nous; je n'ay rien faict d'aujourd'huy.--Quoy, avez vous pas vescu? C'est non seulement la fondamentale mais la plus illustre de vos occupations…. Avez vous sceu mediter et manier vostre vie? vous avez faict la plus grande besoigne de toutes. Pour se montrer et exploicter nature n'a que faire de fortune: elle se montre egallement en tous estages et derriere, comme sans rideau. Composer nos meurs est nostre office, non pas composer des livres, et gaigner, non pas des batailles et provinces, mais l'ordre et tranquillité à nostre conduite.

Hee hath passed his life in idleness, say we; alas! I have done nothing this day. What, have you not lived? It is not only the fundamentall, but the noblest of your occupation. […] Have you knowen how to meditate and mannage your life? you have accomplished the greatest worke of all. For a man to shew and exploit himselfe nature hath no neede of fortune; she equally shewes herselfe upon all grounds, in all sutes, before and behinde, as it were without curteines, welt, or gard. Have you knowne how to compose your manners? you have done more than he who hath composed bookes. Have you knowne how to take rest? you have done more than be who hath taken Empires and Citties.

6 people found this helpful

Satyaki Roy

is one of the most beautiful contemplations on human nature ever written

Reviewed in India on November 30, 2017

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Those who know about Montaigne know about Montaigne, I don't have to say anything to them. Those who do not, or have just heard of this French Judge turned essayist, this book, page by page, word by word, is one of the most beautiful contemplations on human nature ever written. Treat is at self-help, if you will, for it will help you and make you wiser.

A note on the copy. It is a fat book and a paperback. So if you can afford it, get a hard cover. Easier to read.

6 people found this helpful

Tariki

Another kind of review

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 13, 2016

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This is more a review of Review Pages.

This edition - at least, mine is - is indeed the Penquin Dr Screech edition, complete with his very own introduction ( Personally I would have preferred an introduction to Montainge himself rather than a long drawn out apologetic of the Catholic Faith which are available elsewhere if you are so inclined ) Quite a few reviews tell us it is not, and also tell us it is impossible to navigate etc etc. Once again, I can only say that my edition has a full list of all the essays and that they can be individually selected by the simple tap of a finger. It also has numbered notes to the text that can be tapped, read, then tapped again to return to where you started from. It all works fine. Which seems to say that Review Pages are a minefield of misinformation - which as far as intent goes is no ones fault at all, yet surely some way needs to be found to "clean them up"?Otherwise no one knows what they are getting until they have got it! Even a peep to "Look Insude" first often seems to yield a totally different version to the one eventually downloaded.

Price is another thing. I paid £3.99, now it is £7.99. Maybe it is a good idea to put a book on your Wish List and jump in at the moment the price dips? Rather like the Stock Market. But don't wait too long. I was about to buy the Graphic Guide to Quantum Physics at a mere 99p, then saw that the price had been raised to £3.00. I waited........now it is £3.79. Perhaps the publishers wish to demonstrate the actual reality of the "quantum theory"? Chaotic quantum leaps of price for no apparent reason? Who knows. Welcome to the crazy world of Ebooks.

Anyway, Montaigne. Really good to know that a human being, surrounded by the slightly crazy religious world of the 16th century, when Luther was stamping his foot and insisting the sun moved ( not the earth ) and many of "faith" were engaged in warfare to prove it, good to know Montaigne was there in the thick of it salvaging his humanity and passing it on for future generations. There is hope for us all.

24 people found this helpful

Kayrod_66

Very readable.

Reviewed in Canada on April 15, 2024

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Best translation and edition in English so far, texts are translated on the page and references are at the bottom of the page.

RF 32

Interesting book

Reviewed in France on November 26, 2019

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The book is enormous, going to take a while to plough through. I am dipping in and out (the essays that interest me the most) and not necessarily reading it in order, but it is pretty fascinating so far.

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