内容简介：
Scholarship on Montaigne has moved in several directions in the 20th century. Earlier studies of the "Essais" stressed the development and evolution of Montaigne's thought. Scholars based their studies in large part on conclusions drawn from Montaigne's process of continually adding to his text, additions which are represented in successive editions of the "Essais" and which are now designated in most modern editions as the A, B, and C layers of the text. Much valuable research resulted from the assumption that the "Essais" represents Montaigne's ideas on the multitudinous subject matters he treats throughout the work. But more recent literary criticism has shifted its focus, giving more emphasis to the written text than to its writer-while admitting the difficulties inherently associated with the study of a text by an author who describes himself as consubstantial with his book. Montaigne's form is open, his method unresolving, yet critics have described a coherence and deep sense of order and purpose in his text.