It’s mid-December and I know what you’re thinking: Time for another end-of-year recap.

So here’s one you didn’t know you needed: HyperEssays 2023 Wrapped!

Some words are more special than others. ;)

#florioism

Phillip John Usher’s latest installment of “Conversations with People who Read Montaigne,” in French, is on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/10QCtkOL8pI?si=WHHnuZXVAvXLstGs

Frank Lestringant talks about ”Des Coches” and Montaigne’s place in 16th cent. discussions of the colonization of the “New World.”

Lestringant touches on Montaigne’s “laicization of history,” the construction of “Des Coches” (a legal mind’s denunciation of European savagery built around nausea/“écœurement”), and where Montaigne fits, or doesn’t, in post-/anticolonialism.

Phillip John Usher’s next guest on “Conversations with People Who Read Montaigne” will be Cathy Yandell (French/Francophone Studies, Carleton College) on Monday, Oct. 30.

Registration info: https://as.nyu.edu/research-centers/maisonfrancaise/calendrier/events/fall-2023/conversations-with-people-who-read-montaigne--frank-lestringant1.html

(The URL says “--frank-lestringant” but is for Yandell’s talk.)

Pushkin Press just released a new collection of 16 “essential essays” by Michel de Montaigne, newly translated into English by David Coward.

The book is organized in three sections: “Montaigne on Montaigne” (I.2, I.7, I.8, I.9, I.19), “On the Pursuit of Reason” (I.18, I.27, I.38, I.39, I.47, II.2), and “On Governance and Governors” (I.31, I.42, I.44, I.57, III.6).

“Essential” might be a stretch for this particular collection (#marketing) but we’re always happy to see new translations of the Essays in print.

The book includes no notes, index, or bibliography but serves, in the words of Yiyun Li who wrote a short intro to the collection, as “a fine introduction for readers who are just about to discover Montaigne.”

https://pushkinpress.com/books/what-do-i-know/