Meandering poetics: Reading Montaigne through Sperone Speroni

The titles of Montaigne’s essays bear a striking resemblance to those of Italian Renaissance dialogues and discourses in the vernacular of his contemporaries in Italy . The purpose of the present article is to read Montaigne in the light of one such Italian author, Sperone Speroni (1580-1588), and thus to compare Montaigne’s essays to Speroni's dialogues, not only in theme but also in their poetics. We will see how the quest for knowledge about the things of the world led each of our authors to a quite distinct use of the written word: whereas Speroni elaborated the Renaissance dialogue to artistic mastery, Montaigne created the genre of the essay. .