Chapter Two. On Cosmographic Autobiography

A counterpart to the symbolic affinities between the knowing self and the unknowable world in Mercator’s Atlas, the Essais reveal, from the perspective of the late Renaissance, the profound epistemic links between self-examination and global exploration. This chapter therefore considers the development of a distinctly modern relationship between self and world as it evolves through the New World essays and the monumental “Apologie de Raimond Sebond.” Reading the “Apologie” not as a skeptical manifesto, but rather as a paradigmatic treatise on worldmaking, it emphasizes how the Essais are preoccupied with the reimagining of the world in the wake of cross-cultural encounters. Montaigne interrogates all systems of world-order, exposing them as contingent human artifacts. Skepticism thus opens the way to intellectual renewal and demands a new ethical basis for living in a modern world as Montaigne insists on the permeability between an imagining self and a changing world.

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Skepticism · Sociology · Subjectivity · French Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Renaissance Literature and Culture