SOURCE: Posner, David Matthew. “Stoic Posturing and Noble Theatricality in the Essais.” Montaigne Studies 4, no. 1 (September-December 1992): 127-55.

In the following essay, Posner explores Montaigne's version of the ideal nobleman during a period when the political, social, and military power of the nobility was eroding.

One of the more carefully elaborated Montaignian personæ we find in the Essais seems to be a direct response to the problems of Montaigne's historical moment. This is the neo-Stoic nobleman who, disillusioned with the ills of the age, accepts the vicissitudes of fortune with equanimity and spends his life preparing to faire une belle mort. Such a stance is hardly surprising; there is a clear link between the historical position of the sixteenth-century noblesse d'épée—a group which senses its feudal privileges and political strength slipping away as royal power increases, while its military role is being reduced by the changing...