Essay Questions

From the postmodern perspective, explicate the citation of Florio in “Of Sorrow”.

Montaigne engages intertextuality: “Foolish and sordid guise! —[“No man is more free from this passion than I, for I neither love nor regard it: albeit the world hath undertaken, as it were upon covenant, to grace it with a particular favour. Therewith they adorne age, vertue, and conscience. Oh foolish and base ornament!” Florio, 1613, p. 3]. The intertextuality updates the reader the basis of Montaigne’s viewpoint on sorrow. Montaigne concurs with Florio’s perspective on the imprudent embellishment of sorrow.

Summarize Montaigne’s ideology in “That Men Are Not To Judge Of Our Happiness Till After Death”.

Montaigne cites Ovid who proclaims, ““We should all look forward to our last day: no one can be called happy till he is dead and buried.” This quote recapitulates the principal ideology in the essay. Both Montaigne and Ovid submit that one’s finale is the unqualified tester of happiness. One can be said to have deceased opportunely if he/ she had accomplished what he hungered for before dying. The philosophy presented in this ideology renders the quest for contentment as a journey that concludes with death. One’s cumulative pleasure can be established after death for after the passing he or she will not progress with the quest. Accordingly, that is why some bereavements are wretched and some are exultant.