The Design of Montaigne's Essais

This book offers a reading of Montaigne's Essais through the prism of visual art, chiefly the notion of 'design' (dessein), in both its sixteenth-century meanings and its modern usages. In tracing the range of dessein, the book foregrounds the importance of the visual and the spatial in Montaigne's writing, recasting the Essais in a new light.