ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the early anthologies or miscellanies such as Pero Mexia's Diverse lessons which covered a variety of lessons on the excellence of painting, on marriage customs, on cruelty, on the inventions of writing and paper, among other topics. To underline the diversity of the human experience Montaigne often reflected on a citation gathered from a classical source or used a quotation to evoke a sentiment. He gathered these citations using the rhetorical technique of inventio or invention to consider one side of an argument then another and to expose the contradictions, inconsistencies or weaknesses of both perspectives. Montaigne's writing style in the Essais is important for two reasons. First of all, in reflecting on the human experience he touches on many of the familiar themes in the Querelle des femmes: the superiority or inferiority of woman's nature, as well as the ideas of the dignity and misery of man human excellence as well as human fragility.
