The influence of the traditions of consolation before and in the first book of Essays The sentence, the chapter, the book

Like his century, Montaigne was deeply influenced by the traditions of consolation, understood as social, philosophical and rhetorical practices. In the first book of the Essais, this influence is even more ambivalent than it was in his 1571 editions of La Boétie’s works. As the consolatory speech is put to the test, these traditions come as a collection of references that Montaigne deals with in a specific way, and on different scales, from the sentence to the book itself.