The Essays: A Selection by Michel de Montaigne

featuring Ruel Tyson, Founder and Director Emeritus, Institute for the Arts & Humanities and Lloyd Kramer, Director, Carolina Public Humanities and Professor of History

“Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularizing the essay as a literary form. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.”—Amazon Books

“Within a decade of his death, his Essays had left their mark on Bacon and Shakespeare. He was a hero to the enlighteners Montesquieu and Diderot. Voltaire celebrated Montaigne – a man educated only by his own reading, his father and his childhood tutors – as ‘the least methodical of all philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable.’ Nietzsche claimed that the very existence of Montaigne’s Essays added to the joy of living in this world.”—The Conversation

“…intended only ‘for a few men and for a few years,’ The Essays, more than 400 years later, is also now extolled as a source of wisdom for the contemporary world.”—The New York Times Book Review

TUITION: $35, includes a copy of the book

Register online or call 919.962.1544

Please note that the image may not reflect the edition being used for the reading group.