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The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics) by: Michel de Montaigne List Price: £20.00 City Travel Guides Price: £13.99 You Save: £6.01 (30%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 844.3 EAN: 9780140446043 ISBN: 0140446044 Label: Penguin Classics Manufacturer: Penguin Classics Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 1344 Publication Date: February 25, 1993 Publisher: Penguin Classics Studio: Penguin Classics Sales Rank: 18203 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Synopsis: In 1572, Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'essays', inspired by the ideas he found in books from his library and 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. Above all, Montaigne studied himself to find his own inner nature and that of humanity. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature. An insight into a wise Renaissance mind, they continue to engage, enlighten and entertain modern readers. Customer Reviews
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 Rating: - Almost complete satisfactionThis is one of the most fantastic privileges a person could have - to listen to, and be touched by - a dead French nobleman from over 400 years ago. Not only is the work wonderful, the translation is highly consistent and careful over the breadth of the volume - and if you ever needed a book on a desert island, this could be it. Complete satisfaction may be closely approximated, for some - alledgedly - by a slightly over-ripe banana, I'd suggest this is even closer. Rating: - ExceptionalIt's difficult to overstate the brilliance of this book. Montaigne's essays (or 'trials', or 'attempts') have something for everyone: they're enlightening, they're touching, and frequently they're laugh-out-loud funny. It seems absurd to call a 1300-page book an easy read, but Screech's modern translation makes the Renaissance writer accessible to all. The index comes in handy too, since the titles Montaigne gives his essays are often misleading. Buy a copy and keep it on your bedside table. The Essays make ideal night time reading. Edit: I can't help but notice that in the 'Customers Who Bought This Item...' section, everything listed is a set text on a certain Open University course. I nevertheless remain hopeful ... Read More: Rating: - Wisdom in abundanceOne of the great humanists of all time. If you want to learn more about yourself and yourself in relation to others and the world around you, Michel De Montaigne's words offer more than almost any book you may ever read. An honest, beautiful and perspective-enhancing book. Rating: - The first esssayistThis book contains all the wisdom you will ever need. Buy it and read an essay a day, and your life will be enriched for the better. This book packs in so much erudition, wit, truth, love - even comedy that it will be the best friend you've ever had, and keep you company until you die. Anecdote after anecdote, this book is relentless in information. You could study it for a lifetime and barely scratch the surface. But I propose that one should read it for leisure, whereby the selection of one essay a day, even a week, will unmeasurably enrich and empower the reader, making them more humane, fair and accepting in their wordly judgements and decisions. Rating: - An enlightened consciousnessMichel de Montaigne is considered by many to be the inventor of the literary form of the essay, so the collection from which these excerpts come is important in several ways. Montaigne was a humanist and a skeptic in his philosophical approach, and essentially looked at his own experience as the first topic for examination always. The book of Essays was one he worked on periodically throughout his life, issuing different editions, the first of which appeared in 1580. Montaigne's style of writing is sometimes stream-of-consciousness, sometimes structured in more formal styles. Montaigne's stated task in his preface to the reader is for self-examination, but it becomes very clear that Montaigne sees himself as an 'everyman' ... Read More: |
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