Volume 32, Number 2 · February 14, 1985
The Faith of a Skeptic
By D.P. Walker
Montaigne and Melancholy
by M.A. Screech
Susquehanna University Press (Cranbury), 208 pp., $24.50
Michael Screech's book on Montaigne is, as one would expect, intelligent, clear, very well-informed, and most illuminating. His wide first-hand knowledge of sixteenth-century literature, French, Latin, and English enables him to give this extremely difficult author the necessary intellectual background; for, as I argued long ago in this journal, only with such a background can one appreciate Montaigne's startling originality and oddity.[*] His extraordinarily daring reversal of basic contemporary values has now become part of our unquestioned presuppositions, and hence is invisible. We now all value highly what is individual and private, different and original, as opposed to what is general and public, and in conformity with ancient, universal truth—and the younger among us are anxiously searching for their own personality.
Review, 1535 words
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