CHAPTER 7 - PAIN AND COMPASSION IN THE Essais OF MONTAIGNE

Summary

This final chapter investigates the role of pain in the essays of Michel de Montaigne, and particularly in the 1603 translation by John Florio, reprinted in 1613 and 1632, which made Montaigne's pioneering work available for a broad English readership that included William Cornwallis (whose own essays were modeled stylistically on Montaigne), Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, Gabriel Harvey and Sir John Davies. In their sustained, almost obsessive concern with physical suffering, Montaigne's essays form a particularly rich source for an investigation into early modern understandings of pain. Moreover, in the light of the importance of religious pain discourses in the period, one of the most striking aspects of Montaigne's engagement with pain is its almost complete lack of a religious dimension. At the same time, Montaigne's interest in pain can be seen in part as a response to the religious controversies of its time. His Essais mark a crucial moment in the history of pain in that they form a sustained attempt to arrive at an understanding of pain that moves away from Catholic imitatio Christi traditions, while also rejecting and subverting the neo-Stoic models of pain that were available to Montaigne and that form a frequent point of reference in his meditations on pain. Pain, in Montaigne, becomes in part a vehicle for an exploration of the nature of the self, especially in relation to questions of mind and body.