"Montaigne" (1992) Summary and Analysis

As the consummate contemporary essayist in English, Vidal admits to a lifelong love of the work of French essayist Montaigne (born Michel Eyquem in 1533 at his father's estate, Montaigne, near Bordeaux). He also shares with the reader his joy in the recently published Complete Essays of Montaigne translated by M.A. Screech.

Although Vidal says his sensibilities would include Montaigne in the "relativist school of Lucretius and the Epicureans, thus making him proto-enlightenment," Screech on the other hand places him firmly within the Roman Catholic Church, beleaguered at the time by the Reformation which produced "pointless [ideological] war of the crude sort that has entertained us for so much of our own science-ridden century."

Raised as a gentleman ("a category that no longer exists in our specialized time"), soldier and lawyer, Montaigne received private tutoring in Latin but was...