Desan's biography is full of fascinating details about Montaigne and his world.---Glenn Altschuler, Tulsa World
Philippe Desan, in Montaigne: A Life (Princeton; translated from the French by Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal), his immense new biography . . . insists that our ‘Château d'Yquem' Montaigne, Montaigne the befuddled philosopher and sweet-sharp humanist, is an invention, untrue to the original. Our Montaigne was invented only in the early nineteenth century. The Eyquem family, in their day, made no wine at all. They made their fortune in salted fish--and Desan's project is to give us a salty rather than a sweet Montaigne.---Adam Gopnik, New Yorker
An elaborate, exhaustive, and frequently brilliant restoration of Montaigne's life.---Dominic Green, National Review
"This biography is thoroughly illuminating and it is difficult to imagine that it could be bettered. It will surely hold the field for decades."—Michael Moriarty, University of Cambridge
"The new standard biography of Montaigne. Phillipe Desan throws new light on Montaigne's rewriting of the Essays through a study of his changing political aspirations."—Peter Mack, University of Warwick
Likely to be the authoritative biography of Montaigne for decades to come.---Lois C. Henderson, BookPleasures,
The story [of Montaigne's life] is told in absorbing detail by Desan. Drawing on a wealth of research by himself and others, he provides a richer picture than did Donald Frame in his classic biography half a century ago. . . . [Desan’s] biography is indispensable.---Neil Kenny, History Today
Philippe Desan's biography gives back to us the political Montaigne, a figure long displaced by another. The image of Montaigne immured in his tower--an image he himself began to cultivate before he died--has only grown stronger over the centuries: he seems to represent thought and literature outside history and above politics, access to a universal human condition and a perennial philosophy. He is a powerful symbol, a paragon of subjective contemplation in an era of faction and unrest. But Desan suggests this symbol represents something anachronistic and dangerous. . . . Montaigne’s literary-philosophical innovations grew directly out of failed strategies designed to serve his political ambitions. The true story makes a better and more interesting history.---Robert Minto, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Philippe Desan's biography offers a refreshing corrective to those Lives of Montaigne that have underplayed his political activities and aspirations by presenting his literary activities as belonging to their own autonomous sphere. The book offers some intriguing new interpretations, including a compelling account of the different circumstances that surround—and intentions that may animate—the various editions of the Essays."—Richard Scholar, University of Oxford
Montaigne: A Life proves as up-to-date as conceivably possible and clearly stands as the new reference work for any question involving Montaigne's life, political career, or how the two intersect with the Essays. . . . [It] stands as a reference work, a page-turner, and an important work of original scholarship all rolled into one.---George Hoffmann, Sixteenth Century Journal
Desan, an expert on French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), takes readers on a detailed yet sweeping journey through the world of one of the Renaissance's most important literary figures.
Authoritative. . . . We who read Montaigne for help in our trying times, Desan suggests, ought to see him clearly in relation to his own.---David Mason, Hudson Review
A milestone in Renaissance studies. . . . This new biography achieves an impressively comprehensive understanding of a major Renaissance author while relentlessly advancing a very clear and coherent thesis that must be reckoned with in future discussions of Montaigne.---Eric MacPhail, Renaissance Quarterly
In his endeavour to provide an account of Montaigne's life, Desan is to be praised. Writing biographies of early modern lives is fraught with complications. Contemporaneous records for all but the most pre-eminent in society are scant; fissures and lacunae are everywhere. . . . Desan’s is a masterly literary biography, the scholarly expertise of its author showing in its acute attention to documentary detail.---Patrick J. Murray, Times Literary Supplement
One of CHOICE’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2017
Henceforth, this book will be required reading not only for Montaigne scholars but for anyone with a passing interest in his work. In correcting the misleading view of him as a literary purist, untouched by the desire for power or advancement, Desan requires us to read the essays in a new way. Surely this will lead, in time, to revised interpretations. In the meantime, immersion in the extraordinary detail of this work is a delight, and a revelation.---Alan Dent, Penniless Press
Revisiting the public and private life of the extraordinary humanist in light of religious divisions of the 16th century. . . . [Montaigne: A Life is] a hefty biography.
The ‘Essays,' Montaigne informed his readers, were written for a ‘domestic and private’ end and not for ‘either you or my own glory.’ He presented himself ‘in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray.’ Philippe Desan’s Montaigne: A Life is animated by the purpose of detonating this carefully cultivated image. It is an effort at disenchantment. Montaigne’s informality and transparency, in Mr. Desan’s telling, were rhetorical strategies and triumphs of artifice. Montaigne’s exploration of the private self was not a natural impulse but an adjustment required by the defeat of his considerable political ambitions. . . . [Desan] seeks to drag the solitary genius back into his social milieu, exposing his conventionality. Montaigne claimed to have portrayed himself ‘naked’ to posterity. Mr. Desan removes the last of his garments.---Jeffrey Collins, Wall Street Journal
