The Return of Martin Guerre

The Return of Martin Guerre
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 180
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0674766911
ISBN-13 : 9780674766914
Rating : 4/5 (11 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Return of Martin Guerre by : Natalie Zemon Davis

Download or read book The Return of Martin Guerre written by Natalie Zemon Davis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1984-10-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The clever peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse when, on a summer’s day in 1560, a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the continent. Told and retold over the centuries, the story of Martin Guerre became a legend, still remembered in the Pyrenean village where the impostor was executed more than 400 years ago. Now a noted historian, who served as consultant for a new French film on Martin Guerre, has searched archives and lawbooks to add new dimensions to a tale already abundant in mysteries: we are led to ponder how a common man could become an impostor in the sixteenth century, why Bertrande de Rols, an honorable peasant woman, would accept such a man as her husband, and why lawyers, poets, and men of letters like Montaigne became so fascinated with the episode. Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate sixteenth-century villagers. Here we see men and women trying to fashion their identities within a world of traditional ideas about property and family and of changing ideas about religion. We learn what happens when common people get involved in the workings of the criminal courts in the ancien régime, and how judges struggle to decide who a man was in the days before fingerprints and photographs. We sense the secret affinity between the eloquent men of law and the honey-tongued village impostor, a rare identification across class lines. Deftly written to please both the general public and specialists, The Return of Martin Guerre will interest those who want to know more about ordinary families and especially women of the past, and about the creation of literary legends. It is also a remarkable psychological narrative about where self-fashioning stops and lying begins.


The Return of Martin Guerre Related Books

The Return of Martin Guerre
Language: en
Pages: 180
Authors: Natalie Zemon Davis
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1984-10-15 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The clever peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse when, on a summer’s day in 1560, a man swaggered into t
The Return of Martin Guerre
Language: en
Pages: 162
Authors: Natalie Zemon Davis
Categories: Impostors and imposture
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Recounts the history of French imposter Arnaud du Tilh and his denouncement in court by Martin Guerre, whose identity, property, and wife du Tilh tried to claim
The Wife of Martin Guerre
Language: en
Pages: 137
Authors: Janet Lewis
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-07-15 - Publisher: Ohio University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this new edition of Janet Lewis’s classic short novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre, Swallow Press executive editor Kevin Haworth writes that Lewis’s story
Slaves on Screen
Language: en
Pages: 193
Authors: Natalie Zemon Davis
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-03-04 - Publisher: Vintage Canada

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

People have been experimenting with different ways to write history for 2,500 years, yet we have experimented with film in the same way for only a century. Note
Women on the Margins
Language: en
Pages: 402
Authors: Natalie Zemon Davis
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 1995 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Maria Sibylla Merian, a German painter and naturalist, produced an innovative work on tropical insects based on lore she gathered from the Carib, Arawak, and Af