Montaigne: Essays in Reading ed. by Gérard Defaux (review)

244Rocky Mountain Review manages to make his subject stimulating, even when he does not break new interpretative ground. RUDOLF KOESTER University of Nevada, Las Vegas GÉRARD DEFAUX, ed. Montaigne: Essays in Reading. Yale French Studies, 64. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. 308 p. Montaigne: Essays in Reading is the most recent in a series ofcritical works that have appeared in the wake ofthe quadricentennial ofthe 1580 publication of Montaigne's Essais. This collection limits itself to reader-response criticism , gathering in one volume the ideas of a formidable group of internationally known structuralists and post-structuralists: Starobinski, Rigolot, Todorov, Compagnon, Tournon, and others. Yet, to the credit of the editors, the collection includes one article by a graduate student, reflecting an effort, however small, to encourage fresh ideas and young scholars. These essays in reading do indeed bring new insights into often discussed essais (such as "Des Cannibales," "De la Phisionomie," "Apologie pour Raymond Sebond," and "De l'Expérience), illustrate the importance of traditionally ignored essais (Essais 1: 1, 5, and 6), and illuminate some essays long considered puzzling or difficult ("Du Repentir" and "Des Boiteux"). The four essays that comprise the Theoretical Prolegomenon or Part I of the volume suggest that reader-response criticism is peculiarly appropriate for the study of Montaigne's Essais. Thomas M. Greene's "Dangerous Parleys —Essais 1: 5 and 6" suggests that these two essais, dismissed as insignificant by Pierre Villey, reveal a writer uncertain of his reception by readers, but willing to trust his audience. Antoine Compagnon grapples with the meaning of brevitas in the Essais and concludes that they contain no architectural symmetry: the thread that holds them together is theje. For André Tournon, the difficulties posed by Montaigne's style, the interweaving of text and commentary that results in apparently unresolvable paradoxes, call for a "critical apparatus which doesn't allow one to stop on some commonplace maxim while ignoring the complex and unstable system which brings it into play" (72). These three articles, in basing their apology on the Essais themselves, are more convincing than the polemic by Gérard Defaux, who asserts that traditional biographical criticism and thematic explications are no longer useful and should be shunned. Defaux's article, in reiterating the difficulties of Montaigne's discourse, echoes Tournon, and is redundant in yet another way: in his Editor's Preface he has already justified the critical approach practiced in this collection as the "result of the mood of the time" (iii). Given the inevitability of change in critical theory and practice, this would be a safer and less arrogant assertion. The readings of Montaigne in Part II illustrate the fecundity of readerresponse criticism. Edwin M. Duval's study of Montaigne's New World essays reveals Montaigne the ideal pedagogue at work: "Prevented by the very nature of wisdom from revealing true wisdom directly to his readers, the great assayer has designed these . . . chapters in such a way as to help us find our own way to wisdom through the peculiar kind of apprenticeship that he himself had found to be most fruitful" (112). Duval's article is thought- Book Reviews245 provokingly juxtaposed with that of Tzvetan Todorov, who finds a totally different use for (interpretation of?) "Des Cannibales." Reflecting his recent preoccupation with alterity, Todorov's rather forced theory is that Montaigne 's "tolerance" ofother societies is only indifference, that other people for him are only instruments of self-knowledge, and finally, that in being ignorant of others, Montaigne is ignorant of himself. Todorov's provocative essay is followed by François Rigolot's Lacanian analysis of the symbolic sense of letters, both as literary genre and humanistic study. Rigolot convincingly demonstrates that the death of La Boétie literally gave birth to Montaigne's own literary career. The articles by Marianne S. Meijer, Marcel Gutwirth, and Catherine Demure illustrate the truth of the maxim that in order to read, one must read everything. Meijer discovers thematic and linguistic links between Montaigne 's last three chapters that explain the meaning of the puzzling title of III: 11 ("Des Boiteux"): the three essais, read as a unit, attack the crippled reasoning that allows belief in...