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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 01/07/2026

HyperEssays has had full-text search of John Florio’s and my own ongoing translation of the Essays (w/ Cotton/Hazlitt’s as a placeholder) for a while. Today I’m happy to announce that the original Middle French text is also searchable on the site. 🥳 hyperessays.net

hyperessays.net

HyperEssays

HyperEssays is a project to create a modern and accessible online edition of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne.

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 28/02/2026

Happy birthday to our pal, Michel de Montaigne, born 493 years ago today! 🎉

Colorful confetti over a black and white engraved portrait of Michel de Montaigne.

Montaigne is depicted as a middle-aged man, with a mustache and a goatee. He is wearing a ruff and a black hat that covers his receding hairline. He is staring at the viewer with a calm expression.

There is no known portrait of Montaigne, only imagined or possible portraits, most, if not all, done after or long after his death. This engraving, by Augustin de Saint-Aubin, is from 1774.

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Ivan Kreilkamp @ivan812.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

People talk about "On Solitude," "On Cannibals," "On the Power of the Imagination," et al.., but to really grasp Montaigne you need to go to the deep cuts. Like "On Thumbs," which is kind of like a Notes files about references to thumbs in history and art

hyperessays.net

On Thumbs - The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

On Thumbs. Chapter 26 of Book 2 of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne translated by Charles Cotton

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 09/09/2025

hyperessays.net was offline briefly this morning (US EST) but it’s up and running again now. 😮‍💨 Back to reading, translating, annotating, coding, transcribing, copyediting, learning, and just having fun with the Essays.

hyperessays.net

HyperEssays

HyperEssays is a project to create a modern and accessible online edition of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne.

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 19/07/2025

LLMs making stuff up, Montaigne edition: chatgpt.com/share/687bc2...

chatgpt.com

ChatGPT - Quote Attribution Inquiry

Shared via ChatGPT

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 28/02/2025

“I was born between eleven and noon on the last day of February 1533 (as we reckon nowadays, with the year starting in January).“ “Je nasquis entre unze heures et midy le dernier jour de Febvrier, 1533. comme nous contons à cette heure, commençant l’an en Janvier.” hyperessays.net/essays/to-ph...

hyperessays.net

To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die - The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

Death is nothing to worry about!

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 17/01/2025

Happy birthday to us! 🎉🎂 HyperEssays turns 5 today. Still working on it. Still making progress. hyperessays.net

hyperessays.net

HyperEssays

HyperEssays is a project to create a modern and accessible online edition of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne.

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H-Net Job Guide @h-net-job-guide.bsky.social · 01/10/2024

New job: Assistant Professor of Early Modern European History University of California - Los Angeles www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?…

h-net.org

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 18/12/2023

It’s mid-December and I know what you’re thinking: Time for another end-of-year recap. So here’s one you didn’t know you needed: HyperEssays 2023 Wrapped!

Top chapter views. 1: To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die (6549 views). 2: On Sorrow (5862 views). 3: On Friendship (2871 views). Out of 105466 chapter requests, 61670 were for the contemporary edition of the Essays. Chapters in Middle French got 27,565 views.

Top searches. 1: “marble-hearted” (30 searches). 2: “mingle-mangles” (29 searches). 3: “Pyrrho” (25 searches). HyperEssays users searched for 2,022 unique words in 2023. Recurring search terms were often connected to social media posts.

Top downloads. 1: Of Idleness (561 PDFs). 2: Of Friendship (538 PDFs). 3: On Solitude (437 PDFs). HyperEssays hosts 542 chapter PDFs which were downloaded 8449 times this year.

A Year of Words. In 2023, HyperEssays added 48131 lemmas to its 11 lexicons. These are used to populate 1479628 indexable TEI W elements across 434 chapter files. [The slide shows examples of JSON-encoded lexicon entries showing lemma, normalized form, and original printed form of two words.]

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Krista K. Thomason @kkthomason.bsky.social · 16/11/2023

Happy World Philosophy Day, everyone! www.unesco.org/en/days/phil...

HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 15/11/2023

Some words are more special than others. ;) #florioism

A list of words, in JSON format, showing one of them with a “notation” attribute set to “florio-ism.”

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Magnus Pharao @magnuspharao.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

Yesterday something quite remarkable happened: The Florentine Codex, an Encyclopedia of Aztec culture in 12 volumes finished in 1569, was posted in a digital version with beautiful images and translation. Everyone with an interest in history should check it out. florentinecodex.getty.edu

florentinecodex.getty.edu

Digital Florentine Codex

The Getty Research Institute provides global access to the Florentine Codex, considered the most important manuscript of early colonial Mexico

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 08/11/2023

Phillip John Usher’s latest installment of “Conversations with People who Read Montaigne,” in French, is on YouTube: youtu.be/10QCtkOL8pI?... Frank Lestringant talks about ”Des Coches” and Montaigne’s place in 16th cent. discussions of the colonization of the “New World.”

youtu.be

Conversations with People who Read Montaigne, Episode 4: Frank Lestringant and Phillip John Usher

« Conversations with People who Read Montaigne », a series hosted by Phillip John Usher (NYU). For more details on the series, including future dates, past r...

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 24/10/2023

Phillip John Usher’s next guest on “Conversations with People Who Read Montaigne” will be Cathy Yandell (French/Francophone Studies, Carleton College) on Monday, Oct. 30. Registration info: as.nyu.edu/research-cen... (The URL says “--frank-lestringant” but is for Yandell’s talk.)

as.nyu.edu

Conversations with People who read Montaigne: Cathy Yandell

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 24/10/2023

as.nyu.edu

Conversations with People who read Montaigne: Cathy Yandell

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 17/10/2023

Pushkin Press just released a new collection of 16 “essential essays” by Michel de Montaigne, newly translated into English by David Coward.

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 18/09/2023

Phillip John Usher’s series of “Conversations with People Who Read Montaigne,” is soon to resume with its next guest, Frank Lestringant, on Sept. 25th at 1:00 PM (EST). 📅 For more information (and registration, when the time comes?) visit wp.nyu.edu/artsampscien...

wp.nyu.edu

Conversations With People Who Read Montaigne (www.montaigne.us) – Conversations With People Who Re...

Conversations With People Who Read Montaigne

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 18/09/2023

People familiar with Early Modern English, what word is “bedrowle” in John Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s III.8 “Of the Arte of conferring”? “[He] doth nothing but molest al men with the impertinent bedrowle and register of his pedigrees….” hyperessays.net/florio/book/...

hyperessays.net

Of the Arte of conferring - The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

Chapter 8 of Book 3 of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne translated by John Florio

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 18/09/2023

wp.nyu.edu

Conversations With People Who Read Montaigne (www.montaigne.us) – Conversations With People Who Re...

Conversations With People Who Read Montaigne

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 16/09/2023

A three-year investigation into the contents of a coffin thought to be the remains of Michel de Montaigne just ended. Its conclusion? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ www.lefigaro.fr/culture/le-c... (in French)

lefigaro.fr

Le corps de Montaigne n’est peut-être pas celui de Montaigne

Au terme de trois années d’investigation sur la dépouille des réserves du Musée d'Aquitaine, les analyses ne permettent pas d’être formel.

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kottke.org @kottke.org · 05/09/2023

Jessie Jackson on Sesame Street in 1971 doing a call-and-response with the kids of the poem I Am - Somebody. [kottke.org]

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 05/09/2023

“What could be better for any author than for his lifework to become a reader’s lifework, too?” Li, Yiyun. “Some Have Yoga. I Have Montaigne.” @theatlantic.bsky.social, September 4, 2023. www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv....

theatlantic.com

Some Have Yoga. I Have Montaigne.

The philosopher will always be among the writers I reread; his words provide one of the best anchors for one’s ever-changing mind.

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 19/08/2023

Feels apt that as I move to a new platform for writing that the most recent piece I published is on (hand)writing and media history. This was a challenging review essay to write, but I really appreciated the chance to do so. www.publicbooks.org/slanting-the-hi…

publicbooks.org

Slanting the History of Handwriting

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident.

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HyperEssays @hyperessays.net · 19/08/2023

Hello Bluesky! Our first post will be a short introduction. HyperEssays is a project to create a modern and accessible online version of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne.

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