Montaigne’s Essais. On Gender, Writing and Self-Exploration in Renaissance and Late Medieval Thought

Hilmar Schmiedl-Neuburg

doi:10.22201/fesa.26832917e.2026.8.1.553

Authors

Hilmar Schmiedl-Neuburg Kiel University / University of Massachusetts (DE) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6966-6535

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22201/fesa.26832917e.2026.8.1.553

Keywords:

Montaigne, Gender, Écriture Féminine, Self-Fashioning, Self-Understanding

Abstract

The text argues that Michel de Montaigne’s Essais can be read as a proto-écriture féminine because their fragmented, embodied, and subjective modes of writing parallel the characteristics of écriture fémininetheorized by Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva. Through comparative analysis and close readings, the article explores how Montaigne’s skeptical and experimental writing and his treatment of the body, fluid subjectivity, and the performative constitution of sex and gender anticipates both écriture féminineand Judith Butler’s thoughts on gender performativity.

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Author Biography

Hilmar Schmiedl-Neuburg, Kiel University / University of Massachusetts

He is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA, and Privatdozent in the Department of Philosophy at Kiel University, Germany. His research interests include French and German philosophy of the 19^th and 20^th century, including existential philosophy and phenomenology, poststructuralism and critical theory, as well as Asian philosophy and the intersections of philosophy with literature, culture and psychoanalysis.

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