Realidade histórica, representação literária e coesão factual nos ensaios "ameríndios" de Michel de Montaigne

Historic reality, literary representation and factual cohesion in Michel de Montaigne’s "Amerindian" essays

Abstract

The goal of this article is to review the chapters of the thesis Civilization
and barbarism in France at Montaigne’s time that deal with the French writer’s
“Amerindian” essays. Both main and secondary hypothesis will be re-affirmed,
some adjustments and corrections on misleading interpretations will be carried out,
especially those related to the “snake song”. The main hypothesis sustains, based on
archive documents and cross-referencing of historic and textual data, that Montaigne
made a literary bluff when he talks about the meeting between the French king
Charles IX and some Brazilian Indians, at the end of the Cannibals essay. He changed
the scene witnessed with his own eyes at his own city, during the king’s visit in 1565,
in order to put into the Brazilian Cannibal’s mouths his own criticism of French
society. The secondary hypothesis argues that there is a factual cohesion between
“On Cannibals” (I, 31) and “On coaches” (III, 6), because the 1565 royal entry is
the historic background shared by both essays, as this essay’s second part suggests.

Keywords: Montaigne, literary bluff, “Cannibal account”, “snake song”, factual
cohesion