Abstract: It is possible that nineteenth-century criticism did much to lay the foundations for a scholarly reading of the Essays. But it is certain in reverse that Montaigne did a great deal for the conception and definition of the nascent methods of literary history: the relationship between a temperament and a work, of the writer and his time, the relationship to sources, the internal history of the work, and even the influence of the book on its writer – from Montaigne to Montaigne.
