{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-work-v1",
    "id": "montaigne.essais",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/montaigne/essais/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "The Essays",
    "author": "Michel de Montaigne",
    "date": "1580-1592; authorial layers, posthumous 1595 edition",
    "summary": "The Essays test a changing life against customs, books, and the body. Montaigne revises his judgment instead of hiding its contradictions.",
    "learning": "Choose an everyday certainty, identify the custom that makes it obvious, seek a counterexample, then state a judgment precise enough for action and modest enough for revision.",
    "long_summary": "The three books do not deliver a finished system. Each chapter tries a question through an experience, reading, anecdote, or embarrassment, then allows the inquiry to move its starting point.\n\nCanonical identity follows book and chapter. The French preserves a posthumous carrier of authorial layers; Charles Cotton’s English remains a distinct historical translation. Chapter I.28 is excluded because that page transmits La Boétie’s sonnets.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "World of 1989",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet.",
        "science": "Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration.",
        "medicine": "CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits.",
        "transport": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods.",
        "agriculture": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs.",
        "communication": "Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic.",
        "clothing": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet. Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration. CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods. Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "skepticism",
        "label": "Skepticism"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "classical",
        "label": "Medieval and Renaissance"
    },
    "languages": [
        "fr",
        "en"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/montaigne/essais/representations/fr.ndjson",
            "language": "fr",
            "records": 106,
            "role": "authorial_french_posthumous_print_carrier",
            "sha256": "c599dc68f0b0c4f45a636a49c711c4eb83598ba2d891783b790f4fc02950ade1",
            "translator": null
        },
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/montaigne/essais/representations/en.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 106,
            "role": "historical_translation",
            "sha256": "24da8d9e43beb0ab6ee768be2a04deb6948b19e39c3f484ae047726f42670df2",
            "translator": "Charles Cotton"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "academic_skepticism",
            "label": "Academic skepticism",
            "count": 106
        },
        {
            "id": "custom_and_habit",
            "label": "Custom and habit",
            "count": 106
        },
        {
            "id": "death",
            "label": "Death",
            "count": 106
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family",
            "count": 106
        },
        {
            "id": "friendship",
            "label": "Friendship",
            "count": 106
        },
        {
            "id": "judgment_and_impressions",
            "label": "Judgments and impressions",
            "count": 106
        },
        {
            "id": "self_portrait_inquiry",
            "label": "Inquiry through self-portrait",
            "count": 106
        },
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul",
            "count": 104
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time",
            "count": 103
        },
        {
            "id": "law",
            "label": "Law",
            "count": 102
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason",
            "count": 101
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin",
            "count": 100
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "montaigne.essais"
    ],
    "passages": 106,
    "word_count": 458785,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 458785,
        "fr": 366556
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "essais-book-chapter-v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "book",
                "label_fr": "Livre",
                "label_en": "Book"
            },
            {
                "key": "chapter",
                "label_fr": "Chapitre",
                "label_en": "Chapter"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Chapitre",
        "leaf_en": "Chapter"
    },
    "content_checksum": "2eb4781dcca08beffc68527b851fc7f60fcbe5d70cf9a4acd4d4116259c3f2b2"
}