Use Sources: Don't Let Them Use You!

Paraphrase

Dear Reader, this is an honest book. I want to use this preface to assure you that I have no ulterior motives in writing the book, I'm just writing it for personal reasons: I don't want anything from you and I'm not writing it just to be famous or admired. I'm not capable of such motives or ambitions. I am just writing this book so that after I am dead my friends and family will be able to remember me and understand me for who I was. If I were writing this book for fame and money, I would have written it in a different, more educated and elevated style, but since I am writing about myself, I chose to write in a genuine, ordinary and simple style so that my book would accurately and honestly reflect who I am, including my imperfections, as much as society will allow. (I would have preferred to be even more honest in content and style, but I know I live within certain civilized norms to which I must conform.)  The book is a personal autobiography, and there really is no reason for you to waste your time reading it unless you care about me. (Montaigne)

Summary

In his Preface Montaigne explains that his book is a personal autobiography, and should be taken as such (Montaigne).

Signal Phrases  and Verbs for Referring to Sources

For hundreds of years educated people have been told that reading Montaigne (the great Renaissance scholar who first used the term essai to describe a form of writing we now call an "essay") is good for them. In "On Experience and Psychotherapy: A Dialogue with Michel de Montaigne," psychotherapist Matthew Henson "forwarnes" (Montaigne) his readers that reading Montaigne "demands a personal investment from his readers" that psychotherapists might do well to understand because this personal involvement will be required of them in their Readings of their patients.

Works Cited

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Henson, Matthew. "On Experience and Psychotherapy." Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis 18.1 (Jan. 2007): 70-80. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. De Anza College Library, Cupertino, CA. 4 June 2008 <http://ezproxy.fhda.edu:2051/login.aspx?direct=true&;db=aph&AN=24478443&site=ehost-live>.

Montaigne, Michel de. "The Author to the Reader." Montaigne's Essays. Translator John Florio, 1603. The University of Oregon: Renascence Editions, 1999 by Risa Bear . 3 Jun 2008
<http://uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/montaigne/index.htm#ta>.