The essay as criticism

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521300087.028

26 - The essay as criticism

from IV - Literary forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Floyd Gray

Edited by

Glyn P. Norton

Show author details

Glyn P. Norton: Affiliation:
Williams College, Massachusetts

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Before Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon used the word to designate their respective works (unlike in all but a few details), the essay began to take form in the epistolary writings of Cicero and Seneca, Plutarch's Moralia, the compilations of sententiae, exempla, and lectiones of late antiquity and their humanist counterparts. Montaigne gave the title Essais to his 1580 volume as an appropriate designation for a work in which a variety of seemingly unrelated historical and moral examples culled from his readings are pondered and compared, apparently in desultory fashion, for their relative value, thereby conjugating etymologically the exagium of essay and the krinein of criticism. Similarly, the ‘fragments of my conceites’ that Bacon published in 1597 under the title Essays are a selection of adages and aphorisms from his many commonplace-books, carefully contrived to convey practical precepts in a methodical and convincing manner. In ‘Of studies’, he aptly summarizes his underlying strategy: ‘Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider’, recalling Montaigne's deliberative practice and anticipating Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve's definition of a critic as simply a person who knows how to read and who shows others how to read.

Born of otium, Montaigne's Essais represent originally his attempt to capture and tame the chimeras and fantastic monsters which idleness and leisure generated in his mind. Progressively, however, he perceives disorder as natural order, and discursive inconclusiveness as a prerequisite to the immediate reproduction of the reality of his thought and self. In opposition to those who sought definitions and conclusions, Montaigne was increasingly concerned with comparisons and differences, viewing the essay finally as a record of diverse occurrences, irresolute and contradictory ideas: ‘I am unable to stabilize my subject’, he writes, ‘it staggers confusedly along with a natural drunkenness’.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 271 - 277

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521300087.028 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alberti, Leon Battista, I libri della famiglia, ed. Romano, R. and Tenenti, A., 2nd edn revised by Furlan, F., Turin: Einaudi, 1994.Google Scholar

Alciato, Andrea, Andreas Alciatus. The Latin works. The emblems in translation, ed. Daly, P. M., Callahan, V. W., and Cuttler, S., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985, 2 vols.Google Scholar

Angress, R. K.The early German epigram: a study in Baroque poetry, Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1971.Google Scholar

Bacon, Francis, The essays, ed. Pitcher, J., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.Google Scholar

Bacon, Francis, The works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, J., Ellis, R. L., and Heath, D. D., London: Longmans, 1857–74, 14 vols. [Facs. reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann Holzboog, 1989].Google Scholar

Bacon, Francis, Essays, with annotations by Whately, R., (Boston, Life and Shepard 1868).

Baumlin, James, ‘Generic contexts of Elizabethan satire’, in Renaissance genres, ed. Lewalski, B., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.Google Scholar

Beaujour, Michel, Miroirs d'encre, Paris: Seuil, 1980.Google Scholar

Blanchard, Scott, Scholars' bedlam: Menippean satire in the Renaissance, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Bruni, Leonardo, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, ed. Baldassari, S. U., Florence: Olschki, 1994.Google Scholar

Casaubon, Isaac, De satyrica Graecorum poesi et Romanorum satira (1605), ed. Medine, P. E., New York: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1973.Google Scholar

Castiglione, Baldesar, Il libro del cortegiano, ed. Maier, B., 2nd edn, Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1964.Google Scholar

Castiglione, Baldesar, The book of the courtier, trans. Singleton, C. S., New York: Doubleday, 1959.Google Scholar

Cave, Terence, The cornucopian text: problems of writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.Google Scholar

Colie, Rosalie L.Paradoxia epidemica, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.Google Scholar

Colie, Rosalie L.The resources of kind: genre-theory in the Renaissance, ed. Lewalski, B. K., Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1973.Google Scholar

Cox, Virginia, The Renaissance dialogue: literary dialogue in its social and political contexts, Castiglione to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.CrossRef Google Scholar

Daly, Peter M.Literature in the light of the emblem, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.Google Scholar

De Caprio, Vincenzo, ‘I cenacoli umanistici’, in Letteratura italiana. I. Il letterato e le istituzioni, ed. Rosa, A. Asor, Turin: Einaudi, 1982.Google Scholar

Elliott, Robert C.Power of satire: magic, ritual, and art, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960.Google Scholar

Fournel, Jean-Louis, Les dialogues de Sperone Speroni: libertés de la parole et règles de l'écriture, Marburg: Hitzeroth Verlag, 1990.Google Scholar

Fowler, Alastair, Kinds of literature: an introduction to the theory of genres and modes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar

Frank, Grace and Miner, Dorothy (ed.), Proverbes en rime, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1937.Google Scholar

Friedrich, Hugo, Montaigne, ed. Desan, P. and trans. Eng, D., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.Google Scholar

Fubini, Riccardo, ‘All'uscita dalla scolastica medievale: Salutati, Bruni, e i “Dialogi ad Petrum Histrum”’, Archivio storico italiano 150 (1992).Google Scholar

Galilei, Galileo, Dialogi dei massimi sistemi, ed. Flora, F., Milan: Mondadori, 1996.Google Scholar

Gill, R. B. ‘A purchase of glory: the persona of late Elizabethan satire’, Studies in philology 72 (1975).Google Scholar

Girardi, Raffaelle, La società del dialogo: retorica e ideologia nella letteratura conviviale del Cinquecento, Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1989.Google Scholar

Glauser, Alfred, Montaigne paradoxal, Paris: Nizet, 1972.Google Scholar

Grafton, Anthony (ed.), Rome reborn: the Vatican library and Renaissance culture, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1993.Google Scholar

Gray, Floyd, La balance de Montaigne: exagium/essai, Paris: Nizet, 1982.Google Scholar

Gray, Floyd, Montaigne bilingue: le latin des ‘Essais’, Paris: Champion, 1991.Google Scholar

Griffin, Dustin, Satire: a critical reintroduction, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.Google Scholar

Griffiths, Gordon, Hankins, James, and Thompson, David (ed.), The humanism of Leonardo Bruni: selected texts, Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1987.Google Scholar

Guazzo, Stefano, La civil conversazione, ed. Quondam, A., Modena: Panini, 1993, 2 vols.Google Scholar

Guilpin, Edward, Skialetheia; 1598; facs. reprint London: Oxford University Press, 1931.Google Scholar

Hall, Joseph, Virgidemiae, London: T. Creede for R. Dexter, 1597–9.Google Scholar

Hankins, James, ‘The myth of the Platonic academy of Florence’, Renaissance quarterly 44 (1991).CrossRef Google Scholar

Harington, John [trans.], Orlando furioso (1591), ed. McNulty, R., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; see Harington's Preface.CrossRef Google Scholar

Hawkins, Henry, Partheneia sacra, introduction by Höltgen, K. J., Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993.Google Scholar

Herrick, Marvin T.Comic theory in the sixteenth century, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964.Google Scholar

Hirzel, Rudolf, Der Dialog: Ein literar-historischer Versuch; 1895; reprint Hildesheim: Georg Ohms, 1963, 2 vols.Google Scholar

Jardine, Lisa, Francis Bacon: discovery and the art of discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.Google Scholar

Jones-Davies, M. T. (ed.), La satire au temps de la Renaissance, Paris: Touzot, 1986.Google Scholar

Joubert, Laurent, Traité du ris (1579), edited and translated as Treatise on laughter by Rocher, Gregory, University, AL: Alabama University Press, 1990.Google Scholar

Kidwell, Carol, Pontano: poet and prime minister, London: Duckworth, 1991.Google Scholar

Kirk, Eugene, Menippean satire: an annotated catalogue of texts and criticism, New York and London: Garland Press, 1980.Google Scholar

Kuppersmith, William, Roman satirists in seventeenth-century England, Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.Google Scholar

La Perrière, Guillaume, La morosophie, intro. by Saunders, A., Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993.Google Scholar

Laurens, Pierre, L'abeille dans l'ambre: célébration de l'épigramme, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1989.Google Scholar

Lauvergnat-Gagnière, Christiane, Lucien de Samosate et le lucianisme en France au XVIe siècle: athéisme et polémique, Geneva: Droz, 1988.Google Scholar

Le Guern, Michel, ‘Sur le genre du dialogue’, in L'automne de la Renaissance, ed. Lafond, J. and Stegmann, A., Paris: J. Vrin, 1981.Google Scholar

Le Roy, Pierre, et al., La satyre Ménippée: de la vertue du catholicon d'Espagne et de la tenue des estatz de Paris (1594), ed. Marcilly, C., Paris: Garnier, 1889.Google Scholar

Manso, Giambattista, Del dialogo, Venice: Deuchino, 1628.Google Scholar

Marsh, David, Lucian and the Latins: humor and humanism in the early Renaissance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.Google Scholar

Marsh, David, The Quattrocento dialogue: classical tradition and humanist innovation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.CrossRef Google Scholar

Marston, John, The scourge of villanie; 1599; facs. reprint Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966.Google Scholar

Mattioli, Emilio, Luciano e l'umanesimo, Naples: Istituto per gli studi storici, 1980.Google Scholar

Mayer, Charles-Albert, Lucien de Samosate et la Renaissance française, Geneva: Slatkine, 1984.Google Scholar

McCuaig, William, Carlo Sigonio: the changing world of the late Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.Google Scholar

Montaigne, Michel, The essays of Michel de Montaigne, trans. and ed. Screech, M. A., London and New York: Penguin, 1991.Google Scholar

Pallavicino, Pietro Sforza, Trattato dello stile e del dialogo, Rome: Eredi de Corbelletti, 1646.Google Scholar

Patrizi, Giorgio (ed.), Stefano Guazzo e la ‘Civil conversazione’, Rome: Bulzoni, 1990.Google Scholar

Prescott, Anne Lake, ‘Humanism in the Tudor jestbook’, Moreana 24.95–6 (1987).Google Scholar

Puttenham, George (?), The arte of English poesie (1589), ed. Willcock, G. D. and Walker, A., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.Google Scholar

Quondam, Amedeo, ‘L'Accademia’, in Letteratura italiana. I. Il letterato e le istituzioni, ed. Rosa, A. Asor, Turin: Einaudi, 1982.Google Scholar

Rabil, Albert Jr. (ed. and trans.), Knowledge, goodness, and power: the debate over nobility among Quattrocento Italian humanists, Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1991.Google Scholar

Rawson, Claude (ed.), English satire and the satiric tradition, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.Google Scholar

Robinson, Christopher, Lucian and his influence in Europe, London: Duckworth, 1979.Google Scholar

Rollenghagen, Gabriel, Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum, Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1989.Google Scholar

Russell, Daniel S.The emblem and device in France, Lexington: French Forum, 1985.Google Scholar

Schenkeveld, Dirk M. ‘Oi kritikoi in Philodemus’, Mnemosyne 21 (1968).CrossRef Google Scholar

Sebillet, Thomas, Art poétique françois, ed. Gaiffe, F., new edn by Goyet, F., Paris: Nizet, 1988.Google Scholar

Selden, Raman, English verse satire 1590–1765, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978.Google Scholar

Sidney, Philip Sir, A defence of poetry, in Miscellaneous prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Duncan-Jones, K. and Dorsten, J., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.CrossRef Google Scholar

Sigonio, Carlo, Del dialogo, ed. Pignatti, F., Rome: Bulzoni, 1993.Google Scholar

Snyder, Jon R.Writing the scene of speaking: theories of dialogue in the late Italian Renaissance, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.Google Scholar

Tasso, Torquato, Il discorso dell'arte del dialogo (1585), ed. Baldassari, G., ‘Il discorso tassiano “Dell'arte del dialogo”’, Rassegna della litteratura italiana 75 (1971).Google Scholar

Tasso, Torquato, Tasso's ‘Dialogues’: a selection, with the ‘Discourse on the art of dialogue’, ed. Lord, C. and Trafton, D., Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982.Google Scholar

Tateo, Francesco, Tradizione e realtà nell'umanesimo italiano, Bari: Dedalo Libri, 1967.Google Scholar

Thibaudet, Albert, Physiologie de la critique, Paris: Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1930.Google Scholar

Thompson, Craig R.The translations of Lucian by Erasmus and St. Thomas More, Binghamton: The Vail-Ballou Press, 1940.Google Scholar

Tomarken, Annette H.The smile of truth: the French satirical eulogy and its antecedents, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.CrossRef Google Scholar

Villey, Pierre, Les sources et l'évolution des ‘Essais’ de Montaigne, Paris: Hachette, 1908, 2 vols.Google Scholar

Villey, Pierre, Les sources italiennes de la ‘Deffense et illustration de la langue françoise’ de Joachim du Bellay, Paris: Champion, 1908.Google Scholar

Webbe, William, A discourse of English poetrie (1586), in Gregory Smith, G. (ed.), Elizabethan critical essays; 1904; reprint Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, 2 vols.Google Scholar

Wheeler, Angela, English verse satire from Donne to Dryden: imitation of classical models, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1992.Google Scholar

Wilson, Thomas, The arte of rhetorique, ed. Derrick, T., New York and London: Garland, 1982.Google Scholar

Wither, George, The workes, London: J. Beale for T. Walkley, 1620.Google Scholar

Zappala, Michael O.Lucian of Samosata in the two Hesperias: an essay in literary and cultural translation, Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1990.Google Scholar

Book contents

26 - The essay as criticism

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive