This is a repeating event- Event 2 / 316 June 2026 5:30 pm30 June 2026 5:30 pm
Montaigne's Essays (1580-1595)
Event Details
“What do I know?”
This question lies at the heart of Montaigne’s Essays, a work that, from its first publication in 1580, has challenged our relationship with knowledge. For one thing, instead of pontificating or lecturing on anything, Montaigne’s Essays propose that we “try out” (“essayer”) everything.
At almost 1,000 pages, the Essays are filled with a variety of personal experiences mixed with passages that are sometimes serious and profound, sometimes funny and very personal, some are very moving, and some utterly contradict things that he has said before! It is no surprise that Montaigne has influenced a host of thinkers, readers and writers as varied as Shakespeare, Pascal, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf and Proust (to name just a few).
In this study we invite readers to join in a conversation spanning the centuries by exploring together two of Montaigne’s most famous essays: On Cannibals and On Experience.
A little taste of his writing that might get us close to him, or maybe, as Pascal would say, close to ourselves:
“It is not in Montaigne but in myself that I find everything that I see there”
JOINING DETAILS:
- Three meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Vivien Kogut and Emilia Steuerman
- Tuesdays 5:30-7:30pm (UK time), 16, 23 and 30 June 2026
- £120.00 for three two-hour meetings
