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 (914 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

GET 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:

GET 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
An Analysis of Natalie Zemon Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre
Language: en
Pages: 114
Authors: Joseph Tendler
Categories: Education
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-07-05 - Publisher: CRC Press

GET EBOOK

The bizarre story of Martin Guerre–a peasant who disappears from a small village in sixteenth-century France and whose place is taken by an imposter–has cap
Trickster Travels
Language: en
Pages: 659
Authors: Natalie Zemon Davis
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-03-06 - Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

GET EBOOK

An engrossing study of Leo Africanus and his famous book, which introduced Africa to European readers Al-Hasan al-Wazzan--born in Granada to a Muslim family tha
Fiction in the Archives
Language: en
Pages: 244
Authors: Natalie Zemon Davis
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 1987 - Publisher: Stanford University Press

GET EBOOK

To receive a royal pardon in sixteenth-century France for certain kinds of homicide--unpremeditated, unintended, in self-defense, or otherwise excusable--a supp