Montaigne's Stages, and Witches
Department of French
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QL
Scotland
a.wygant{at}french.arts.gla.ac.uk
| Abstract |
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Reading two of Montaigne's essays – I, 21: "De la force de l'imagination", and III, 11: "Des boyteux" – this study argues that it is no longer urgent to construct Montaigne as a liberal free-thinker on witchcraft. Instead, it appears that he was deeply rooted in the conceptual turbulences of his own time. This rootedness, nevertheless, escapes the local and comes to its readers as general and powerful. How this happens, a wonder of reception history, involves moving his local witches onto a stage with its own historicity, a stage of the imagination itself.
Key Words: Montaigne, Michel de Wier, Jean imagination lame reception history stage Epictetus ghost