We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Equity and Amerindians in Montaigne's "Des cannibales" (1, 31).
- Authors
CONNOLLY, SHANNON R.
- Abstract
Since the first publication of the Essais in Bordeaux in 1580, readers of this work have recognized skepticism underlying the judgment of its author, Michel de Montaigne. Arguing that the Pyrrhonist school of skepticism relies upon cultural diversity, or that Montaigne was influenced by sixteenthcentury proto-ethnographic accounts of European travellers to the New World, many scholars of the Essais have read "Des cannibales" (1, 31) as proto-anthropological. In my close reading of this chapter, however, I contend that Montaigne's rhetorical use of equity, and not his debated practice of a proto-anthropological cultural relativism, shares a special reciprocity with his skeptical judgment in the Essais. Equity, a para-legal procedure that Montaigne used to judge while he was a magistrate in the Bordeaux parlement (1557-70), remains largely underdeveloped in scholarship on the Essais.
- Subjects
INDIGENOUS peoples of the Americas; SKEPTICISM; CULTURAL pluralism; DES Cannibales (Book); ESSAIS (Book); CULTURAL relativism
- Publication
Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 2020, Vol 43, Issue 3, p195
- ISSN
0034-429X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.33137/rr.v43i3.35306