Analysis of the essay "From cruelty" by Michel de Montaigne, starting from the studies on spoken language and verbal interaction

Abstract

The objective here is to identify formal influences of gender essay, investigating the elements which are combined in its constitution - in the work of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), through discussion of topic-discursive procedures from spoken language. First, it is necessary to reflect on the formal arrangement of textual elements in the genre essay, in which it is not clear a priori pre-established structure: it occurs alinear overlapping themes, arguments, reasoning, irony, philosophical reflections, confidences and sinuous comparisons, almost undetectable, pre-Baroque. This structure receives a nondogmatic gender test, and a more flexible - in terms of an author´s thoughts and its textual setting. The hypothesis to be discussed here, about the influence of spoken language is: how the structure procedures of Spoken Language contribute to the understanding of the uniqueness of the essay? Now, if we consider that the opening would feature this kind of discourse, and the Spoken Language, in turn, is more "open" than written language, in terms of structuring discursive procedures, would be clear that, if any influence of these procedures in the genre of the speech in question, the essayist would be able to choose between the most diverse paths in the process of textual construction. In this sense, we tried to use these theoretical tools for analyzing the discursive procedures adopted by Michel de Montaigne in his essay From cruelty.