Vicissitudes de l’histoire et des arts Essai de lecture « traversière » (III, 6)

Saturated with references and metaphors to the arts and human inventions, “Des coches” invites its readers to navigate unsettled waters. The very title gives the first indication of a moving meditation. From boats, motors of conquest but also emblems of Paris, Montaigne comes, by association, to evoke different sorts of carts and carriages, disorienting his readers in order to show them, under this “variety of forms”, the vicissitudes of history and the arts.