Rewriting Culture: Montaigne Recounts New World Ethnography

Abstract

Caught between substantial domestic and local responsibilities requiring his attention in the south of France and serious national as well as international crises on the other, Michel de Montaigne sought in the accounts of the New World by Francisco Lopez de Gómara, André Thevet, and Jean de Léry not only an escape from the political and religious unrest of his time, but an instructive view of how other cultures had dealt with internal and external threats to peace and well-being.¹ In recasting the work of sixteenth-century chroniclers, he does so not only using the narrative techniques of his contemporary conteurs but also from the perspective of the increasing brutality and violence on the home front. Montaigne’s two essays, “Des cannibales”, and “Des coches” have been hailed as an early appeal to cultural relativism, that is, the examination of customs within the context of the culture to which they belong.² More precisely, Montaigne understood the conflict between personal ethics and public action.