@article{jbp:/content/journals/10.1075/rro.46.2.05gei, author = "Geiger, Marion and Monnin, Luc", title = "Michel de Montaigne : Du Discours sur la mort de La Boétie aux Essais: Une poétique de l’amitié", journal= "Revue Romane. Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures", year = "2011", volume = "46", number = "2", pages = "267-281", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.46.2.05gei", url = "https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/rro.46.2.05gei", publisher = "John Benjamins", issn = "0035-3906", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "Essais", keywords = "friendship", keywords = "Renaissance", keywords = "Etienne de la Boétie", keywords = "poetics", keywords = "Montaigne", abstract = "Montaigne prefaces the works of Etienne de la Boétie with a letter that Montaigne supposedly wrote shortly after the sudden death of his friend, whose last enigmatic words to Montaigne were: “make a place for me”. A close examination of the intertexts and rhetoric of the letter reveals that it can be read as a failed attempt by Montaigne to respond to his friend’s wish. The letter, indeed, fails to offer a true literary place to his friend who ceased to be a privileged addressee or reader, to become an absent object of discourse mentioned in the third person. Montaigne will try to “make a place” for his dead friend elsewhere, while writing his Essais, by developing a polyphonic mode of writing functioning as a substitute to the lost friendship. It will be argued that in the Essais, friendship, more that a mere content of discourse, becomes a form of expression.", }