There wasn’t much sense of exploration, of articulating something new. There were facts and theories to be understood, and then you proved you had done so by parading them in your essay. In education, an essay is to demonstrate what you have learned. This is not how I was taught to write essays at school. His life and writing is beautifully captured in Sarah Bakewell’s book How to live: A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. An essay might end with a successful articulation of what he was trying to get at, or it might prove inadequate and abortive, something to come back to later. Each one was an foray into an idea, and the whole point of calling them ‘attempts’ implies that some of them will miss the mark. The word ‘essay’ is the French for ‘try’ or ‘attempt’, and it’s what the 16th century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne called his writings.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |