Michel de Montaigne was reluctant to repent an act he judged, at least in his own peculiar case, of little use. But we might nonetheless read his Essays as a kind of confession. By focusing on Montaigne’s associations with his books, with his friends, with his wife, and with his lovers, this presentation argues that Montaigne was able to compartmentalize his moral experience and to fashion a particular ideal of sincerity–one that resisted some of the most intransigent demands of both Catholic and Protestant teachings.
John Jeffries Martin – 28th Annual CRRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar
John Jeffries Martin completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University under the direction of the late David Herlihy, a pioneer in the quantitative study of late medieval and early modern Europe. Martin is currently Professor of History at Duke University, where his research focuses on the cultural history of western Europe.
John Martin is the author of Myths of Renaissance Individualism (Palgrave Macmillan 2004), editor of The Renaissance World (Routledge, 2007) and co-editor of Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations (Truman State University Press, 2006) and Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State (Hopkins, 2000). He is also editor of The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad (Routledge, 2003), and author of Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Hopkins, 2004). The first edition of Venice’s Hidden Enemies (California, 1993), won the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association for the best first book in European history.
Martin has held fellowships from the Danforth Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the American Philosophical Society, twice from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His articles and essays have appeared in The American Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, the Journal of Social History, Renaissance Quarterly, Renaissance Studies, and Quaderni Storici. He has served on the editorial board of The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and on the editorial advisory board for Renaissance Quarterly.
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Each year a senior scholar of high distinction is invited to visit the CRRS to share his or her current research with the faculty and graduate students in Toronto and its vicinity, and to give two seminars. The program is designed to make possible informal contact between the visitor and local scholars.
