The Design of Montaigne's Essai

By Vittoria Fallanca

What can design tell us about literature? What can literature tell us about design? The Design of Montaigne's 'Essais' provides a model for answering these questions by analysing the uses and function of the term dessein. Wresting design free from its intentionalist connotations and focusing instead on the polysemy of the term in its early modern usage, which connoted both a mental plan or intention, and a material drawing or sketch, this study emphasises the open-ended design of the Essais, placing particular importance on its affinities with the practice of sketching. Looking across the Italian border at theories and practices of drawing, the book places Montaigne's dessein in dialogue with its Italian counterpart disegno, arguing for the importance of the visual dimension in Montaigne's thinking, and in his writerly imagination. The dynamism and restlessness of dessein allow us to reconsider the visual metaphors used by Montaigne to characterise the project of the Essais in light of the errance of the drawn line.

Vittoria Fallanca offers a fresh way to capture the essentially gerundive nature of the Essais, constructing a visual and spatial perspective on a text by tracking multiple lines of thought that are, paradoxically, designed to escape its author's intention and control. In following the vagaries of dessein as it operates in Montaigne, the book also offers a perspective on the relationship between design and literary studies, the ways in which design can be put in our critical approaches as readers of literature, with a focus on the text as an object of use. Far from an end-oriented practice of self- or artistic control, design emerges in this book as a chancy, experimental encounter between mind and world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198985487
• ISBN13: 9780198985488
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 240 Pages