Open AccessMontaigne's Vanity: Reading Digressions on Travel
Author(s) -
Virginia M. Green
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
renaissance and reformation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 2293-7374
pISSN - 0034-429X
DOI - 10.33137/rr.v30i4.11520
Subject(s) - indulgence , theme (computing) , pleasure , reading (process) , subject (documents) , psychology , art , literature , aesthetics , advertising , philosophy , computer science , linguistics , business , theology , neuroscience , library science , operating system
The theme of travel, prominent in the essay "De la Vanité" (III, 9), and the subject of many of its "digressions," serves, in a sense, to disguise the more central and unifying theme of vanity. The question of vanity lies behind all of Montaigne's so-called "digressions" on travel, which are not really digressions from his stated theme at all, but rather ways of recasting and examining vanity in a more personal vein. Travel is perhaps the essayist’s chief vanity; yet, despite its inherent vanity, Montaigne takes great pleasure in this self-indulgence.