SOURCE: Regosin, Richard L. “Textual Progeny.” In Montaigne's Unruly Brood: Textual Engendering and the Challenge to Paternal Authority, pp. 13-47. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

In this excerpt, Regosin traces changes in the critical reception of Montaigne's Essays from the literal interpretations of the writer's own time to the current focus on figurative and metaphorical meanings.

Car ce que nous engendrons par l'ame, les enfantemens de notre esprit, de nostre courage et suffisance, sont produicts par une plus noble partie que la corporelle, et sont plus nostres.

(II, 8, 400)

For what we engender by the soul, the children of our mind, of our heart and our ability, are produced by a nobler part than the body and are more our own.

translated by Donald Frame

One of the thorniest interpretive problems posed for modern readers of Montaigne's Essais is to determine the value of its discursive content. This was...