#i do feel very strongly that the kneejerk 'it was the times' defenses are tremendously inadequate and frequently inaccurate

[anghraine]

The meeting is over! It actually went really well—it turns out that the most intimidating person on my committee not only did not consider failing my exam on sixteenth-century British literature, but thought it was exceptionally strong :)

I did re-read the whole thing after that, lol, and there is another part I’m still fine with, probably because I’d been trying to figure out what I think about the issue (in relation to various figures) for years:

Context is important here. Montaigne alone should not and does not bear the entire weight of early modern misogyny. At the same time, I think that recourse to “well, of course he thought that way; everyone did” is somewhat lazy and does not really give Montaigne credit for his individuality and intelligence. He was not an automaton of the normative. That much is clear in “On cannibals”; it is certainly clear by the end of “On some lines of Virgil.”