|
|
Article: The irrepressible Pepys.(17th century diarist Samuel Pepys)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Samuel Pepys's Diary (1660-1669) is an extraordinary document in many ways, but its most extraordinary aspect is that Pepys seems to have had no model for it. In terms of informality and naked self-revelation, it was unprecedented; the only comparable writings to precede it were Montaigne's essays (1580-1588), but Montaigne wrote principally in the interests of philosophical inquiry, which Pepys did not--and in any case Pepys had not read Montaigne when he wrote the Diary. It is true that some of Pepys's contemporaries kept journals, the best-known being John Evelyn's, begun in the 1640s. But this was a decorous (not to say dull) chronicle of travel, politics, and public ...