This is the last title page of a Renaissance translation that I will show you. It's not of a Greek or Latin text, but of Michel de
Montaigne's famous book, Essais (1580), the origin of all personal essays in our tradition. John Florio translated this book in 1603. Montaigne's Essays are important for many additional reasons: the style and flow of Montaigne's words and thought, the book's affirmation of the individual and his observation and experience (cf. empiricism's rise), and Montaigne's skeptical treatment of human nature and all authority. Montaigne's Essays were translated again at the end of the 17th century by Charles Cotton, and again many, many times since. Click here for a boffo portrait of the great Montaigne.
Be sure to notice, once again, the central place of "moral" insight in this Renaissance text. This is true even though in some ways the very existence of a book of personal essays asserts that the individual matters as much as the general truths, the theology, and the hierarchical structure of society that were carried over from medieval life into the Renaissance.
It's interesting to note that, in Florio's translation of Montaigne's French, Montaigne asserts in his preface: "Myself am the matter of my book."
Click here for a hypertext (i.e., with links) translation of Montaigne's terrific essay, "Of Cannibals." (Shakespeare plagiarized from this for some of the character Gonzalo's lines in his play The Tempest!--Of course, the laws of copyright didn't exist in 1611, nor our idea of academic fair play.)
Now we turn to another, related subject: Popular publications of Renaissance England.
Click here to see what some might call examples of "low" culture from the Renaissance.