Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8r8nv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T21:35:41.551Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sublimity and Skepticism in Montaigne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

David L. Sedley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay argues that two early modern phenomena, the rise of the sublime as an aesthetic category and the emergence of skepticism as a philosophical problem, are interrelated. This argument, introduced through a study of Montaigne's meditation on the ruins of Rome in his Travel Journal, takes on complementary forms. The first is that sublimity motivated skepticism: the sense that a force existed outside the aesthetic categories conventional in the Renaissance (such as wonder) drove authors into a skeptical frame of mind. The second is that skepticism created sublimity: the skeptical mindset offered alternative resources of aesthetic power as authors quarried the fragmentation and distraction embedded in skepticism to fashion a sublime style. These claims revise standard views of skepticism and the sublime, suggesting a mandate for an enriched aesthetics behind late-Renaissance loss of belief and exposing the Renaissance impulse behind the modern career of sublimity.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 113 , Issue 5 , October 1998 , pp. 1079 - 1092
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by The Modem Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Barnes, Jonathan. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Biondo, Flavio. Roma Instaurata. De Roma Triumphante. Basel: Froben, 1531. 218–72.Google Scholar
Boccassini, Daniela. “Ruines montaigniennes.” Montaigne Studies 5 (1993): 155–90.Google Scholar
Brody, Jules. Boileau and Longinus. Geneva: Droz, 1958.Google Scholar
Brush, Craig B. Montaigne and Bayle: Variations on the Theme of Skepticism. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966.10.1007/978-94-011-9676-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cave, Terence. Recognitions: A Study in Poetics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Céard, Jean. La nature et les prodiges: L'insolite au XVIe siècle, en France. Geneva: Droz, 1977.Google Scholar
Coleman, Dorothy Gabe. “Montaigne and Longinus.” Bibliothèque d'humanisme et Renaissance 47 (1986): 405–13.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, Brian P., and Schmitt, Charles B. “Stoics, Sceptics, Epicureans, and Other Innovators.” Renaissance Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. 196–284.Google Scholar
Courtine, Jean François, et al. Of the Sublime: Presence in Question. Trans. Librett, Jeffrey S. Albany: State U of New York P, 1993.Google Scholar
Cunningham, J. V. Tradition and Poetic Structure. Denver: Swallow, 1960.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. “Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant.” The Textual Sublime and Its Differences. Ed. Silverman, Hugh J. and Aylesworth, Gary E. Albany: State U of New York P, 1990. 87–108.Google Scholar
Du Bellay, Joachim. Les antiquitez de Rome. Œuvres poétiques. Ed. Aris, D. and Joukovsky, F. Vol. 2. Paris: Bordas, 1993. 3–32.Google Scholar
Du Bellay, Joachim. “Romae Description Œuvres poétiques. Vol. 7. Ed. Demerson, Geneviève. Paris: Nizet, 1984. 36–45.Google Scholar
Escoubas, Eliane. “Kant; or, The Simplicity of the Sublime.” Courtine et al. 55–70.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Frances. Solitude and the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Individuation. New York: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Freeman, Barbara Claire. The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fumaroli, Marc. “Rhétorique d'école et rhétorique adulte: Remarques sur la réception européenne du traité ‘Du sublime’ au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle.” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 86 (1986): 33–51.Google Scholar
Goyet, Francis. “Le pseudo-sublime de Longin.” Etudes littéraires 24.3 (1991–92): 105–19.Google Scholar
Goyet, Francis. Le sublime du “lieu commun”: L'invention rhétorique dans l'Antiquité et à la Renaissance. Paris: Champion, 1996.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.10.7208/chicago/9780226306575.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Resonance and Wonder.” Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. New York: Routledge, 1990. 161–83.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M. “Du Bellay and the Disinterment of Rome.” The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. 220–41.Google Scholar
Hampton, Timothy. Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.10.7591/9781501711183CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hathaway, Baxter. The Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hathaway, Baxter. Marvels and Commonplaces: Renaissance Literary Criticism. New York: Random, 1968.Google Scholar
Herrick, Marvin T. “Some Neglected Sources of Admiratio.” Modern Language Notes 62 (1947): 222–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertz, Neil. The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Holt, E., ed. A Documentary History of Art. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Jacks, Philip. The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity: The Origins of Rome in Renaissance Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Klinger, Cornelia. “The Concepts of the Sublime and the Beautiful in Kant and Lyotard.” Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant. Ed. Schott, Robin May. University Park: Penn State UP, 1997. 191–211.Google Scholar
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. “Sublime Truth.” Courtine et al. 71–108.Google Scholar
Langer, Ullrich. Perfect Friendship: Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille. Geneva: Droz, 1994.Google Scholar
Larmore, Charles. “Scepticism.” The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Ed. Garber, Daniel and Ayers, Michael. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 1145–92.Google Scholar
Limbrick, Elaine. “The Paradox of Faith and Doubt in Montaigne's ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond.‘” Wascana Review 9.1 (1974): 75–84.Google Scholar
Limbrick, Elaine. “Le scepticisme provisoire de Montaigne: Etude des rapports de la raison et de la foi dans 1' ‘Apologie.’” Montaigne et les Essais, 1580–1980. Ed. Michel, Pierre et al. Paris: Champion; Geneva: Slatkine, 1983. 168–78.Google Scholar
Limbrick, Elaine. “Was Montaigne Really a Pyrrhonian?” Bibliothèque d'humanisme et Renaissance 39 (1977): 67–80.Google Scholar
Logan, J. L. “Montaigne et Longin: Une nouvelle hypothèse.” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 83 (1983): 355–70.Google Scholar
Lucan. The Civil War. Trans. Duff, J. D. Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1928.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. Heidegger and “the Jews.” Trans. Michel, Andreas and Roberts, Mark. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. Trans. Rottenberg, Elizabeth. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. 1984.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde.” The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Trans. Bennington, Geoffrey and Bowlby, Rachel. Cambridge: Polity. 1991. 87–107.Google Scholar
MacPhail, Eric. The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature. Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1990.Google Scholar
Magnien, Michel. “Montaigne et le sublime dans les Essais. Montaigne et la rhétorique. Ed. O'Brien, John, Quainton, Malcolm, and Supple, James J. Paris: Champion, 1995. 27–48.Google Scholar
Mandowsky, Erna, and Mitchell, Charles. Pirro Ligorio's Roman Antiquities: The Drawings in MS XIII.B.7 in the National Library of Naples. London: Warburg Inst., 1963.Google Scholar
Marvels of Rome: Mirabilia Urbis Romae. Trans. Nichols, Francis Morgan. 2nd ed. Ed. Gardiner, Eileen. New York: Italica, 1986.Google Scholar
Mauro, Lucio. Antichità di Roma. Venice: Ziletti, 1557–58.Google Scholar
Mazzocco, Angelo. “Petrarca, Poggio, and Biondo: Humanism's Foremost Interpreters of Roman Ruins.” Francis Petrarch, Six Centuries Later: A Symposium. Ed. Scaglione, Aldo. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Dept. of Romance Langs.; Chicago: Newberry Lib., 1975. 353–63.Google Scholar
Mazzocco, Angelo. “Rome and the Humanists: The Case of Biondo Flavio.” Rome in the Renaissance. Ed. Ramsey, P. A. Binghamton: State U of New York P, 1982. 185–95.Google Scholar
Mirabilia urbis Romae. Codice topographico della città di Roma. Vol. 3. Ed. Roberto Valentini and Giuseppe Zucchetti. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1946. 17–65.Google Scholar
Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Ancient History and the Antiquarian.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1940): 184–204.Google Scholar
Monk, Samuel H. The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in Eighteenth-Century England. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1960.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Trans. Frame, Donald M. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1958.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. Les essais. Ed. Villey, Pierre. Paris: PUF, 1967.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. Journal de voyage. Ed. Rigolot, François. Paris: PUF, 1992.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. Travel Journal. Trans. Frame, Donald M. San Francisco: North Point, 1983.Google Scholar
Mortier, Roland. La poétique des mines en France: Ses origines, ses variations de la Renaissance à Victor Hugo. Geneva: Droz, 1974.Google Scholar
Nancy, Jean-Luc. “The Sublime Offering.” Courtine et al. 25–53.Google Scholar
Norris, Christopher. “From the Sublime to the Absurd (Lyotard).” Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War. London: Lawrence, 1992. 70–85.Google Scholar
Patterson, Annabel, ed. Roman Images. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Petrarch. L'Africa. Ed. Festa, Nicola. Florence: Sansoni, 1926.Google Scholar
Petrarch. Le familiari. Ed. Rossi, Vittorio. 4 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1926.Google Scholar
Petrarch. Opere latine. Ed. Bufano, Antonietta. Turin: Torinese, 1975.Google Scholar
Petrarch. Petrarch's Africa. Trans. Thomas G. Bergin and Alice S. Wilson. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Petrarch. Rerum Familiarium. Vols. 1–8. Trans. Aldo S. Bernardo. Albany: State U of New York P. 1975.Google Scholar
Pigman, G. W. “Imitation and the Renaissance Sense of the Past: The Reception of Erasmus' Ciceronianus.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (1979): 155–78.Google Scholar
Platt, Peter G. ‘“Not before Either Known or Dreamt Of’: Francesco Patrizi and the Power of Wonder in Renaissance Poetics.” Review of English Studies 43 (1992): 387–94.Google Scholar
Popkin, Richard H. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza. Berkeley: U of California P, 1979.10.1525/9780520342453CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinney, Laura. “Weiskel's Sublime and the Impasse of Knowledge.” Philosophy and Literature 18 (1994): 309–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsey, Paul, ed. Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth. Binghamton: State U of New York P, 1982.Google Scholar
Raphael. Gli scritti: Lettere, firme, sonetti, saggi tecnici e teorici. Ed. Camesasca, Ettore. Milan: Rizzoli. 1994.Google Scholar
Rigolot, François. Introduction. Montaigne, Journal de voyage v-xxxvi.Google Scholar
Rogozinski, Jacob. “The Gift of the World.” Courtine et al. 133–56.Google Scholar
Schiffman, Zachary Sayre. On the Threshold of Modernity: Relativism in the French Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Charles B. Cicero Scepticus. A Study of the Influence of the Academica in the Renaissance. The Hague: Nijhoff. 1972.Google Scholar
Shuger, Deborah K. Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuck, Richard. Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard. “Translations and Commentaries of Longinus, On the Sublime, to 1600: A Bibliography.” Modern Philology 47 (1950): 145–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiskel, Thomas. The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.Google Scholar
Weiss, Roberto. The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch. Cambridge: Medieval Acad. of Amer., 1955.Google Scholar