Composing Myself for Others Montaigne's Essais has been described as the most personal book in world literature. His claim to be of the same substance as his book, and the perpetual sense of his presence in the pages of the Essais, have led to much valuable scholarship on Montaigne's personal intellectual history. Recent trends in Montaigne criticism reveal a shift away from the writer toward an interest in uncovering rhetorical and compositional strategies used by Montaigne. Articles in this volume demonstrate that the engaging artfulness of Montaigne's natural style belies his modest pretense that he writes as he would speak; lately critics have proclaimed that the success of the self-portrait of the Essais may very well be due to Montaigne's unequalled rhetorical abilities.
