A detailed reading of Montaigne, Descartes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, underscoring the foundational and potentially liberating force of travel in early modern French philosophy.

"Abbeele's study offers more than the title promises; it goes beyond a mere illustration of the common place of travel as a metaphor for critical thought in order to investigate the extent to which the metaphor of travel might actually limit thought. In a series of readings examining the figure of travel in the writings of Montaigne, Descartes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, Abbeele argues that "each writer's discourse allows for the elaboration of a metadiscourse opening onto the deconstruction of the writer's claims to a certain property (of his home, of his body, of his text, of his name)" Philosophy and Literature

$29.50 paper ISBN 978-0-8166-1934-4
208 pages, 6 X 9, 1991