Montaigne and Brief Narrative Form

This is the first book-length study to trace the origin of the essay to the brief narrative tale. While the form of the conte gave shape to the essay, the violence of the times destabilized a known genre to create a new one. It was the disruption of the times and the impact on Montaigne's personal and public life that led to the birth of the new form, a form he so aptly named the essay.

Historic events and his reaction to the violence impacted and transformed Montaigne's work. We witness a change from the initial efficient style with which he had set out to interweave his own reflections, self-portraits, and anecdotes with the tales from ancient and contemporary storytellers, poets, and historians. Eventually the growing political disruption pulled Montaigne away from the exemplary claims of the tales to borrow from the more contingent, detailed observations of ethnographers and physicians.