| Authorship Notes |
Montaigne's comments on travel within his essay on education for children (itself written for the children of Diane de Foix, countess of Gurson) are among the most influential passages within the tradition of educational travel. It provides the framework for all later French considerations of the topic.
Montaigne's program praises travel but is critical of the contemporary travelling practices of the French nobility (at least as he presents them). The concern of travellers should not be with trifles such as antiquities and courtly fashions but rather 'chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others' (translation, Charles Cotton, 1877).
Although these priorities are broadly similar to the apodemic tradition centered on Justus Lipsius there are also important developments. For Montaigne, unlike Lipsius, one does not travel in order to meet the most brilliant minds of Europe. Rather it is the encounter with the variety of humanity and its manners, customs, and laws which has the potential for improvement, creating 'well made', rather than 'well filled' minds.
Montainge also goes against the established apodemic tradition by recommending travel in youth, rather than as a finishing school following a liberal arts education. In this Montainge himself began a tradition which was later continued by Locke, and then Mme de Genlis.
'De l'institution des enfants' occurs at pp. 185-241 of the 1580 edition. |
