K.S., good morning. That was really interesting! Reading your poem made me think that maybe it’s not good to decide things too much based on age, like saying it’s still too early or already too late.
My recollection of the Essays is that stoicism is an early phase of Montaigne’s thinking, whereas in the later essays, this philosophy becomes more nuanced, or, at least, more complicated, and in fact, much of his early stoic confidence is absent in the later essays. “Of age” comes at the end of the first book (in Frame’s translation) whatever that means. What do you think of this?
Another thing that occurred to me is that the Elizabethans did not think about authorship in the strictly proprietary way we do now, and so one’s name on a manuscript meant less, borrowing from other sources was commonplace, and didn’t have the stigma it has today.
I think your claim about the Elizabethans’ view of authorship is certainly correct, and Shakespeare probably thought it was merely a nod to an author he admired to included lines from Montaigne. Montaigne’s stoic confidence does seem to fade, replaced by some cross of skepticism and non-attachment. I think Hamlet actually mirrors this change to some extent, in Act V. Some scholars think that Hamlet is influenced by “Of Physiognomy,” which is one of his last essays.
That’s interesting, I’ll go back and read “Of physiognomy.”
I know you’re not doing this, but there’s all sorts of loose energy in the literary world devoted to minimizing the accomplishment of a Shakespeare, or to skew the meaning of Homer, for reasons that are decidedly un-literary, and I feel compelled to oppose those impulses, if you know what I mean.
K.S., good morning. That was really interesting! Reading your poem made me think that maybe it’s not good to decide things too much based on age, like saying it’s still too early or already too late.
amazing!
Thank you!
My recollection of the Essays is that stoicism is an early phase of Montaigne’s thinking, whereas in the later essays, this philosophy becomes more nuanced, or, at least, more complicated, and in fact, much of his early stoic confidence is absent in the later essays. “Of age” comes at the end of the first book (in Frame’s translation) whatever that means. What do you think of this?
Another thing that occurred to me is that the Elizabethans did not think about authorship in the strictly proprietary way we do now, and so one’s name on a manuscript meant less, borrowing from other sources was commonplace, and didn’t have the stigma it has today.
I think your claim about the Elizabethans’ view of authorship is certainly correct, and Shakespeare probably thought it was merely a nod to an author he admired to included lines from Montaigne. Montaigne’s stoic confidence does seem to fade, replaced by some cross of skepticism and non-attachment. I think Hamlet actually mirrors this change to some extent, in Act V. Some scholars think that Hamlet is influenced by “Of Physiognomy,” which is one of his last essays.
That’s interesting, I’ll go back and read “Of physiognomy.”
I know you’re not doing this, but there’s all sorts of loose energy in the literary world devoted to minimizing the accomplishment of a Shakespeare, or to skew the meaning of Homer, for reasons that are decidedly un-literary, and I feel compelled to oppose those impulses, if you know what I mean.
Quite the contrary. All honor to the greats.