Abstract: When recounting his efforts at self-consolation, Montaigne is clear that his “mind” offers nothing but rehashing of the topoi and figures of consolatio. Reading “De l’expérience” in the context of a flurry of interest in self-consolation, this article identifies in this rehearsal of a flattering rhetoric a counter-intuitive parrêsia : Montaigne practices the tropes of consolatio as a parrhesiastes, not a consoler, and in doing so redefines the style as well as the function of truth.
