SOURCE: Hampton, Timothy. “The Subject of America: History and Alterity in Montaigne's ‘Des Coches.’” The Project of Prose in Early Modern Europe and the New World, edited by Elizabeth Fowler and Roland Greene, pp. 80-103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Hampton discusses Montaigne's representation of the positions of both the Spanish and the indigenous population in his essay on the Spanish conquest of America.

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Dido

Ancient Tales, Modern Fragments: Narrative and the Essay

Near the center of “Des Coches,” the sixth chapter of the third book of the Essais, Montaigne pauses to consider the limits of human knowledge. Human reason, he says, is “foible en tous sens. Elle embrasse peu et voit peu, courte et en estandue de temps et en estandue de matiere” (“weak in every direction. It embraces little and sees little, short in both extent of time...