Practice question · Select all that apply
How does Montaigne’s "add, never delete" method change the book a reader finally holds? Select every effect that follows.
Hints
- Three of these follow directly; one is impossible under the method.
- A book that only ever grows cannot end up shorter.
Show the answer
- A. Contradictions remain visible on the page
- C. The book records the process of thinking, not only its results
- D. Scholars can date individual passages by layer
Why
Only addition means the text can only grow, so the second option is impossible. The other three are exactly what the method was for: the process stays visible, contradictions are preserved rather than tidied, and the layers remain separable centuries later.
Practise Montaigne’s Essais: Inventing a Form to Think In
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Literature I is free to start.
More questions on Montaigne’s Essais: Inventing a Form to Think In
- Montaigne revised the Essais by adding new material without deleting what he had already written.
- Complete the account of Montaigne’s method and its motto.
- Sort each feature of the Essais by whether it follows from Montaigne’s METHOD or describes his SUBJECT.
- Montaigne treats his own life not as exemplary biography, but as an assay of human nature. Why does he place…
- In which year did Montaigne first publish the Essais?
- Montaigne’s digressions are best understood as a failure to organise his material.
- How many essays does the collection contain across its three books?