The animal as a figure of the “ignorant wise man” Paradoxes against classical literature in Montaigne’s “Apologie de Raymond Sebond”

Montaigne, who read some of the humanist paradoxes against classical literature, reinterprets this tradition in “Apologie de Raymond Sebond,” in which he offers a new perspective on the ambiguity typical of these texts. The figures of animals, which embody the advantages of ignorance but cannot be imitated by the scholar, contribute to the deceptive nature of the chapter, as a comparison with Agrippa’s De incertitudine and some Italian irregolari confirms.