As pointed out in the acknowledgments, The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne is the first Oxford Handbook devoted to a French author. It is probably the most extensive introduction of its kind, with forty-two entries from both new and established authorities. While montaignistes will find much of it to be familiar territory, it is an invaluable resource not only as a reference tool for specialists, but as a guide for scholars looking to add Montaigne to their repertoire, and especially for instructors interested in incorporating the Essais into courses. With this audience in mind, Philippe Desan introduces Montaigne as “a bridge between what we call the early modern and modernity” (1).

The book is divided into three parts. The first, “Historical Montaigne,” grounds Montaigne in his historical, literary, and cultural context, and calls into question many of the myths surrounding his life and writing. For example, in “Montaigne’s Education,” George Hoffmann demystifies the image of a young Montaigne who spoke only Latin thanks to the language immersion program devised by his father, and stresses the oft-underestimated influence of the Collège de Guyenne on the essayist’s thought and style. Timothy J. Reiss’s “Montaigne, the New World, and Precolonialisms”—though not the first study to assert that “‘otherness’ is the least of what interests Montaigne” in the New World essays “Des cannibales” and “Des coches”—provocatively argues that Montaigne is interested in Native Americans out of a genuine respect for their “ready sites of exchange” with European culture, a possibility ultimately destroyed by the conquista and the colonial project (198, 214).

The second part, “Reception of Montaigne,” contains a mere four entries. Warren Boutcher’s entry on the “Englishing” of Montaigne in the Anglo-Saxon world is quite welcome, as are William M. Hamlin’s and Michael Moriarty’s chapters on Montaigne’s well-known influence on Shakespeare and Descartes, but there is a comparative lack of attention given to the essayist’s fortunes and influence outside of the francophone and anglophone spheres. Paul Smith does provide an admirable survey of Montaigne’s influence on major figures of European intellectual and literary history and of his worldwide popularity attested to by 224 translations into thirty-five languages, but one wonders why there couldn’t have been, for example, chapters on how Rousseau defines his autobiographic project against Montaigne’s, on the reception of Montaigne in Germany, or on the keen interest for Montaigne in Japan. To put out an Oxford Handbook on Montaigne is to stake a claim to the essayist’s place in world literature, and a more truly global perspective would only strengthen that claim.

The third part, “Modern and Global Montaigne,” is likely to be the main attraction for modernists looking for an introduction to Montaigne for research or teaching purposes, as its entries detail what Montaigne has to say about issues of particular concern to modern readers. They represent a gamut of approaches to the issue of reading Montaigne with modern eyes while avoiding the trap of anachronism: some entries, like Alain Legros’s debunking of the myth of Montaigne the atheist, relativist, or Nicodemite in “Montaigne on Faith and Religion,” take a circumspect approach similar to that of part 1, while others, like Todd Reeser’s entry on “Montaigne on Gender,” use close reading and contextualization to make an argument for Montaigne’s relevance to contemporary theoretical issues. Instructors teaching Montaigne in graduate or advanced graduate seminars will find these entries particularly useful to assign as secondary reading, as they may often be put into dialogue with one another. For example, in “Montaigne on Alterity,” Tom Conley argues that alterity is a “founding relation” for Montaigne that governs his representation of the New World, a view that would seem to run counter to Reiss’s (700).

In conclusion, it is in the domain of pedagogy that The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne has the potential to shine the brightest. It can provide instructors not only with a sense of what is at stake in Montaigne, but with an idea of what essays to assign or excerpt, as well as readymade secondary readings and useful, albeit somewhat scant, suggestions for further reading. Hopefully, Desan and his fellow contributors have started a trend that will someday see Oxford Handbooks for other luminaries of early modern France.