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MONTAIGNE IN MOTLEY, MONTAIGNE IN TEARS: THE STABLE MADNESS OF THE ESSAIS READ THROUGH EARLY-MODERN MELANCHOLY

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dc.contributor.authorWender, Yael Susan
dc.contributor.chairHowie, Cary S.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberSaccamano, Neil Charles
dc.contributor.committeeMemberLong, Kathleen P.
dc.date.accessioned2018-10-03T19:27:43Z
dc.date.available2018-10-03T19:27:43Z
dc.date.issued2017-12-30
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation argues for a melancholic reading of Montaigne’s Essais, through the lens of early-modern notions of melancholy and folly, placing Montaigne “in a motley” and “in tears,” and hence, fully within his period. As such, Montaigne is seen to embody one of the most complex, unique, and critical forms of subjectivity: early-modern melancholic subjectivity, as it will be surveyed in this dissertation through a wide variety of literary and visual concepts and figures that engage and resonate with one other, to produce the “world” of early-modern melancholy, rather than just a psychological state. A reading of Montaigne’s Essais as a melancholic text will demonstrate the consistency and unity of a text famous for its heterogeneity and diversity. If these diverse parts of the Essais, ranging from cats to fathers, from honesty to cruelty, from the act of essaying to the critique of custom, from Montaigne’s views on passions to his views on death, can all be read and enveloped within [one] melancholy, then the implications are both that melancholy is not a pathology defined by lack, but rather a subjectivity, and moreover — a privileged subjectivity, whose insight and critical abilities now parallel those of the “privileged” work of the Essais, as a work of immense complexity, singularity, value, and meaning.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.7298/X4V1230C
dc.identifier.otherWender_cornellgrad_0058F_10622
dc.identifier.otherhttp://dissertations.umi.com/cornellgrad:10622
dc.identifier.otherbibid: 10474193
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/59090
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subjectComparative Literature
dc.subjectdepression
dc.subjectfolly
dc.subjectmelancholy
dc.subjectMontaigne
dc.subjectearly-modern
dc.subjectDisability
dc.subjectFrench literature
dc.titleMONTAIGNE IN MOTLEY, MONTAIGNE IN TEARS: THE STABLE MADNESS OF THE ESSAIS READ THROUGH EARLY-MODERN MELANCHOLY
dc.typedissertation or thesis
dcterms.licensehttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/59810
thesis.degree.disciplineRomance Studies
thesis.degree.grantorCornell University
thesis.degree.levelDoctor of Philosophy
thesis.degree.namePh. D., Romance Studies

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