The Confessions of Montaigne

Religions

关键词: Montaigne;    self;    confession;    prayer;    repentance;    interiority;    sexuality;    sincerity;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rel3040950

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Montaigne rarely repented and he viewed confession—both juridical and ecclesiastical—with skepticism. Confession, Montaigne believed, forced a mode of self-representation onto the speaker that was inevitably distorting. Repentance, moreover, made claims about self-transformation that Montaigne found improbable. This article traces these themes in the context of Montaigne’s Essays, with particular attention to “On Some Verses of Virgil” and argues that, for Montaigne, a primary concern was finding a means of describing a self that he refused to reduce, as had Augustine and many other writers before and after him, to the homo interior.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.