Montaigne in the "Garden of Earthly Delights": the Image of the Corps Morcelé in the Essays

For Lacan, Montaigne is a figure of tremendous interest and significance. Although rarely read as such, when read at all outside the philosophical tradition of reason, one can find in the Essays a psychoanalytic perspective on the imaginary order that is provocative in its very depth. By examining closely several of the individual essays, in particular the very early essay "Of idleness," looking for signs of an unravelling of the subject-image-ego structure, there is a case to be made for situating the notion of the corps morcele at the very heart of Montaigne's project undertaken in the Essays. Revealed to be an analytic instance of ego decomposition, resulting in images of fragmented bodies and disordered corporeal forms, Montaigne descends into the imaginary order, confronting the turbulent and animated existence of the lived body. What makes this significant for Lacanian psychoanalysis, is that Montaigne, in the Essays, explores the experience of the body-subject within the imaginary order, even going so far as to adopt an imagistic orientation in characterizing both the form of the essay and its corporeal content. Lacan was fond of referring to the painter Hieronymous Bosch and his "Garden of Earthly Delights" as a portrait of the corps morcele. In the Essays, Montaigne emerges as a literary cousin of Bosch, possessing, arguably, an even greater descriptive potential for comprehending the how the body manfests itself to the psychoanalytic subject in the wake of ego decomposition.