On Being Tongue-Tied: Franchise, Fluency, and Precarity in Montaigne’s ‘De la vanité’

Abstract

Drawing attention to a key but overlooked moment in Montaigne’s ‘De la vanité’, this article interrogates the relationship between two aspects of the essayist’s ‘franchise’: his personal freedom and his frank, direct speech. It offers a reading that runs counter to Montaigne’s self-characterization as ‘le plus libre et moins endebté’ person he knows, underscoring the precarity of his ‘franchise’ and his anxieties surrounding it. In this context, ‘franchise’ is shown to be hemmed in by a cluster of obligations, even as the essayist seeks to escape them. In contrast to the critical interest in Montaigne’s reflections on free-thinkers and courageous speakers, including Socrates, Seneca and Cato the Younger, and complementing studies that have highlighted the motif of babble and loquacity in the Essais, this article focuses on Montaigne seeing himself in a frightful inversion of ‘franchise’: the looking glass of Lyncestes and the story of his death as a consequence of his disfluency. Reading ‘franchise’ in this light helps us to learn what Montaigne considered one of the first lessons worth learning: the difference between ‘liberté’ and ‘licence’.