Montaigne, penseur de la première modernité 3304-2DXW-ST-18-OG

This seminar offers an introduction to the Essays by focusing on the moving question of the subject: "It's me that I paint," said Montaigne at the opening of his book. It will be precisely to put the autobiographical project to the test of its philosophical contexts (skepticism among others) and socio-historical (local realities, practices of sociability, religious wars and great discoveries). In line with the works of Thierry Wanegfellen and Marie-Clarté Lagrée on the emergence of self-awareness and on the cultural construction of interiority in the autumn of the Renaissance, we will focus on the relation of the self to the otherness, from "the individual to the collective and the institutional" (Thierry Wanegfellen). In the modern age, "the subject is invented by a simultaneous process of subjectivation and subjugation" (Thierry Wanegfellen and Frank Lestringant): he becomes aware of his freedom and individuality of land without ceasing to be constrained by his duty of obedience to the sovereign (God and the Prince). Individual consciousness feeds on collective constraints that it incorporates and exorcises in different ways. The Essays offer, in their thought as in their writing, an illustration of this dialectical phenomenon constituting the modernity of the work.
While contextualizing the autobiographical project of Montaigne, we will examine its actuality, and more broadly, on the ability of Essays to resonate with the questions and hot topics of our time: identity, individual and collective, secularism , intolerance, cultural diversity, etc.
The study texts will be distributed in class.

The course will take place between March 5 and 22, 2018, Monday to Friday, from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Course will be taught by prof. Véronique Ferrer from Université Paris Ouest

Type of course

elective monographs
general courses

Mode

Classroom

Prerequisites (description)

Course will be taught by prof. Véronique Ferrer from Université Paris Ouest

Learning outcomes

At the end of the seminar, the student will be able to identify the main lines of Montaigne's thought, to understand the editorial genesis of the Essais and to situate the work in its historical as well as literary context. He will also be able to analyze in writing and orally a passage of Essais to reveal its original structure, its internal rhetoric and its metaphorical network, all elements that make the literary originality of Montaigne.

Assessment criteria

Evaluation of the seminar:
Written: analysis of a short text
Duration: 1h30
Three absences maximum

Bibliography

Montaigne, Essais, éd. E. Naya, D. Reguig et A. Tarrête, Paris, Gallimard, Folio classique, 2009.
Autres éditions
Les Essais de Michel de Montaigne, sous la direction de Jean Céard, Paris, Le Livre de poche, « La Pochothèque », 2001.
OU
Montaigne, Les Essais, éd. Pierre Villey, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1924.

Lectures critiques
• Sur Montaigne (quelques titres) :
Demonet, Marie-Luce, Michel de Montaigne – Les Essais, Paris, PUF, coll. « Etudes littéraires », 1985.
Desan Philippe, Montaigne. Une biographie politique, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2014.
L’Ecriture du scepticisme chez Montaigne, éd. Marie-Luce Demonet et Alain Legros, Genève, Droz, 2004.
Nakam, Géralde, Montaigne et son temps. Les événements et les Essais, Paris, Gallimard, 1993.
Tournon André, Montaigne en toutes lettres, Paris, Bordas, 1989.
• Sur l’histoire de l’intériorité :
Lagrée Marie-Clarté, « C’est moy que je peins ». Figures de soi à l’automne de la Renaissance, Paris, PUPS, 2012.
Wanegfellen Thierry, Le Roseau pensant. Ruse de la modernité occidentale, Histoire Payot, 2010.
Taylor Charles, Les Sources du moi. La formation de l’identité moderne, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1998.

Additional information

Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:

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Description of 3304-2DXW-ST-18-OG in USOSweb