Brazilians in Michel de Montaignes Essay Of Cannibals -- Montaigne Es

Brazilians in Michel de Montaignes probe Of CannibalsWhen describing native Brazilian people in his 1580 essay, Of Cannibals, Michel de Montaigne states, Truly here be real savages by our standards for either they must be thoroughly so, or we must be there is an amazing distance in the midst of their character and ours (158). Montaigne doesnt always maintain this amazing distance, however, between savages and non-savages or between Brazilians and Europeans he first portrays Brazilians as non-barbaric people who argon not same(p) Europeans, then as non-barbarians who best embody traditional European values, and at last as barbarians who be diametrically opposed to Europeans. First, Montaigne portrays Brazilians as non-barbaric people who are not like Europeans. He asserts, I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nationexcept that each homosexual calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice (152). Through his give-and-take of certain salient qualiti es that define these other, non-barbaric, Brazilian people, Montaigne actually elevates the Brazilians above Europeans. For example, he writes, Those Brazilian people are wild, just as we call wild the fruits that temperament has produced by herself and in her normal course whereas really it is those that we have changed unnaturally and led astray from the common order, that we should rather call wild (152). by and by likening wild Brazilians to wild fruits, he implies that they both retain alive and vigorous their genuine, their most useful and natural, virtues and properties, which we have debased in the artificial fruits in adapting them to gratify our corrupted taste (152). For Montaigne, wildness and natural virtues are characteristics that are u... ...s the superiority of the former to the latter in the second case, he greatly decreases the distance between the two groups and the level of superiority that Brazilians have everywhere Europeans. Finally, his essay, as a whole, ultimately reinstates a great distance between the two groups, and Europeans reclaim superiority over Brazilians. Notably, in the first two cases, nature is also elevated above art, but art at last subjugates nature. Perhaps this is because Montaigne identifies with Lycurgus and Plato who could not believe that our society could be maintained with so minor artifice and human solder (153). Montaignes essay suggests that he relies on the artifice of his writing and interpretations to explore and define social groups, explore and engraft social hierarchies, and maintain social order in a sort that ultimately favors him and his people.