Renewing the Ancients: Montaigne’s Retelling of the Tales of Antiquity

Abstract

Renewing old material—retelling stories in a fresh, original manner— was in fact what Montaigne was doing when he recalls the tales once told by his classical masters from Greek and Latin Antiquity. He does not claim, as did some of his contemporary conteurs, that a tale borrowed from Antiquity was of recent origin, although he will on occasion recast a remote foreign setting in French tones to render the tale less remote and more universal in terms of human behavior. Marguerite de Navarre, who makes such claims to telling only true stories (“nulle nouvelle qui ne soit veritable histoire”), masks the remote medieval as well as fictional origins of the Seventieth Tale by sketching in the very efficient style of the nouvelle the familiar geographic setting of her tale (“En la duché de Bourgoingne”).¹ Nor does he cast a tale borrowed from the remote Middle Ages as if it had taken place just a short while ago.