Montaigne on Language

Abstract This article discusses Montaigne’s complex relationship to the French language. From the foreign-language quotations that fill the pages of the Essays to Montaigne’s early education in Latin and his assertion that he has created a “dictionary all [his] own,” the relationship between the essayist and the French vernacular is anything but straightforward. This article examines the essayist’s resistance to the cultural politics of French in his own time and argues against the modern assimilation of Montaigne and the Essays into the French language. It proposes instead to understand the language of the Essais through the lens of temporality, translation, difference, and différance. The article also discusses the challenges involved in reading and translating Montaigne’s language in the twenty-first century.