Saul Frampton

An introduction to the life and works of the sixteenth-century literary master traces the impact of personal tragedies and war on such pieces as "Les Essais," discussing the writer's reflections and his enduring legacy.

Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life

When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?

In the year 1570, at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne gave up his job as a magistrate and retired to his chteau to brood on his own private grief - the deaths of his best friends, his father, his brother, and most recently his first-born child. But finding his mind agitated rather than settled by this idleness, Montaigne began to write, giving birth to the Essays - short prose explorations of an amazing variety of topics. And gradually, over the course of his writing Montaigne began to turn his back upon his stoical pessimism, and engage in a new philosophy of life, in which living is to be embraced in all its sensory, exuberant vitality - the smell of his doublet, the pleasures of friendship, the intelligence of his cat and the flavour of his wine. Saul Frampton offers a celebration of perhaps the most joyful and yet profound of all Renaissance writers, whose work went on to have a huge impact on Shakespeare, and whose writings offer a user's guide to existence even to the present day.

Saul Frampton

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