How Self-Reliance and Nature drew on The Complete Essays
A documented line of influence: Ralph Waldo Emerson demonstrably engaged Michel de Montaigne’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Complete Essays
Michel de Montaigne · 1580
RenaissanceThe influenced
Self-Reliance and Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1844
RomanticismRelevance
9/10
On Self-Reliance and Nature’s page
- The book the young Emerson read and felt "as if he had himself written" — the kinship that shaped his voice
- Montaigne's habit of trusting his own mind over inherited authority is the skepticism Self-Reliance turns into a creed
- Emerson named Montaigne directly in his "Montaigne; or, the Skeptic" — read the Essays first to see where Emerson's confidence in the self was born
On The Complete Essays’s page
- The young Emerson read his father's old volume of Montaigne and felt "as if he had himself written the book" — a lifelong kinship
- Montaigne's self-trusting skepticism is the bedrock under Self-Reliance: trust your own mind, distrust borrowed certainties
- Emerson returned the debt openly with a dedicated essay, "Montaigne; or, the Skeptic," in Representative Men