Abstract: Do the Essais have a guiding thread? Surely not : as recent scholarship emphasises, this is a polyphonic, fragmented, malleable text, open to multiple interpretations, reducible to none. Not to mention that it risks resuscitating the tired debates over authorial intention. This article proposes to revive this question by reading the Essais not for the presence of an intention but of a design, paying attention to role of the polysemic term “dessein” in Montaigne’s project.
