Montaigne e a figura do canibal como método de discurso indireto

Montaigne and the figure of the cannibal as a method of indirect speech

Abstract

In “On Cannibals” (I, 31), Montaigne reports the supposed meeting with a Brazilian cannibal and the conversation that would have taken place between
them. However, several studies point out that the author probably had not been wholly honest when composing his portrait about the savages, and let alone
when describing the conversation that he would have had with one of them. The cannibals’ characterization presented by the philosopher had been extracted from literary sources or from his own imagination, besides reproducing certain resources of Renaissance rhetorical traditions. Therefore, we intend to highlight how the rhetoric and literary devices being in the essay constitute a narrative that aims at to transmit indirectly and covertly the social and political thoughts of the author.

Keywords: Rhetoric; fictional creation; Montaigne’s Essays; “On Cannibals”;
Renaissance philosophy.