Essay #2

For humans it only takes milliseconds for our neurons to fire and the thought process to occur. When examining a quote like the one by David Foster Wallace we must look at all angles and how people throughout time have attempted to captivate the fleeting moment in words. Earlier authors like Montaigne and Jane Austen shed light on how others wanted to write down their moments too fast to fully capture.
An author like Montaigne is the golden example of how one tries to explain something so large but can only summarize it. Montaigne in his essays employs the stream of consciousness technique in much of his writing, all his thoughts from simple to complex just being jotted down on paper. He dives into topics which cannot be fully comprehended let alone described and begins babbling on about them ranging from impersonal issues like government to close things such as friendship. More support for Foster’s quote come from the sheer length of the essays the fact that one man could elaborate on subjects already talked about for centuries without covering every aspect goes to show that life is complex. By the time Montaigne died he had only discussed probably a fraction of his inner thoughts unable to put every last idea in ink.
The writing style of Montaigne reveals his way of thinking. There had to has been method in his madness as he was capable of producing so much and having it out live him by at least 500 years. From reading his work just of the vocabulary and topics we can tell he was a true Renaissance man following the Baconian method of questioning. His stories especially about the voyages to savage lands show he fell into the status quo of the barbarity of the natives and why they should be brought to civil Christian standards. Not only his opinions and words tell the audience he was a man of the Rebirth but also his style of writing. He favors a more modern style with stream of consciousness while constantly questioning his ideas as many did at the time mainly those exploring the nature of reality or authority.
Compared to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice there are several definitely different elements from each author. One major difference is Austen is telling a story with concrete characters whereas Montaigne is not narrating any specific tale more just general answers to big questions. The background of the authors is of course completely opposite, although both intellectuals they lived three hundred years apart, several hundred miles apart, and are opposite genders. Some perspective on the timeline is to compare a writer today to one in the 1800’s, the gap between Austen and Montaigne is 150% larger. Being French and English during the empires 1066 to 1900 competition also shows drastic disparities between two artists. Lastly on their lives is the fact that Austen is a women who viewed things like love and war very differently than most men at the time other big female issues emerging at the time were abolition, suffrage, and religious reform which to a man in the 1500s like Montaigne may have seemed less important.