Abstract
Most French writers of the second half of the sixteenth century are unduly sensitive to the preponderant role played in their lives by what they term “inconstance,”1 but none more so than Montaigne. His earliest essays are permeated with this concern, especially the first essays of Books I and II where he initially calls attention to the “inconstance” of man and what he means by it.
Rien n’est constant, Ah! rien n’est constant en ce monde
Pontus de Tyard
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References
E. Lablénie, Montaigne auteu r de maximes ( Paris: SEDES, 1968 ) pp. 11–17.
E. Marcu, Répertoire des idées de Montaigne ( Genève: Droz, 1965 ).
D. Frame, Essays and Selected Writings ( NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1963 ) p. 142.
D. Frame, Montaigne’s Essais: A study ( NY: Prentice-Hall, 1969 ) p. 40.
J.-Y. Pouilloux, Lire les “essais” de Montaigne ( Paris: Maspero, 1969 ) p. 32.
A. Thibaudet, Montaigne. ( Paris: Gallimard, 1963 ).
Emerson, Representative Men (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903 ed.) p. 168.
P. Villey, Les Sources et l’évolution des essais de Montaigne, 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1908, 2e ed. 1933 ).
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© 1976 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, Netherlands
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Rahv, B.T. (1976). The Kaleidoscope of Montaigne’s “Inconstance”. In: Cartier, N.R. (eds) Aquila. Chestnut Hill Studies in Modern Languages and Literatures, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1377-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1377-2_8
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