The Return of Martin Guerre

Introduction: New Approaches to Late Medieval Court Records

“…Rather than expecting the documents to provide direct evidence of subaltern ideas, he proposed looking for them in the discrepancies between well-known ideas of higher classes and the testimony provided by lower classes in the courts' records (Ginzburg, a sixteenth-century case of identity fraud, presented her subjects as skilful agents possessing both nous and psychological depth. Though the Martin Guerre case she treated was far from ordinary, she argued that the texts it spawned could reveal many of the more common motivations, values and experiences of people from that period (Davis, 1983).…”

“…The most famous examples of such claims can be found within microhistory, a bestseller genre of historical writing which found a wide public audience from the 1970s. Through their survival in court records, so their authors claimed, the voices could be heard of the medieval villagers of Montaillou (Le Roy Ladurie, 1975), of the Italian miller Menocchio (Ginzburg, 1980), and of the impostor Arnaud du Tilh (Davis, 1983), granting access to their lives and thoughts many centuries after their deaths. This material has allowed questions to be asked of the period that go far beyond purely legal issues, instead touching on areas as distinct as legal politics, administrative practices, feuding, family, kinship relations, gender, sexuality, and belief.…”

Writing Global History and Its Challenges—A Workshop with Jürgen Osterhammel and Geoffrey Parker

“…Themes of "imposture" and "dissimulation" and the fashioning of identity are central to social conflicts and social and personal aspiration across the spectrum in the sixteenth century: they are found in the actual lives of both men and in Martin Luther's sermons, as well as in the Martin Guerre trial. 39 This took Parker back to the question of what is "good" and "bad" global history. Which criteria do we use for inclusion and exclusion?…”

“Being speculative is better than to not do it at all”: an interview with Natalie Zemon Davis

“…The struggle for direct evidence has come up occasionally in my earlier books-in Martin Guerre and also in the Leo Africanus book. 4 For al-Wazzan-that's the real Arabic name of "Leo Africanus"-I was able to find several manuscripts. But even then, there were aspects of his life he didn't talk about.…”