Natalie Zemon Davis

These essays, three of them previously unpublished, explore the competing claims of innovation and tradition among the lower orders in sixteenth-century France. The result is a wide-ranging view of the lives and values of men and women (artisans, tradesmen, the poor) who, because they left little or nothing in writing, have hitherto had little attention from scholars. The first three essays consider the social, vocational, and sexual context of the Protestant Reformation, its consequences for urban women, and the new attitudes toward poverty shared by Catholic humanists and Protestants alike in sixteenth-century Lyon. The next three essays describe the links between festive play and youth groups, domestic dissent, and political criticism in town and country, the festive reversal of sex roles and political order, and the ritualistic and dramatic structure of religious riots. The final two essays discuss the impact of printing on the quasi-literate, and the collecting of common proverbs and medical folklore by learned students of the "people" during the Ancien Régime. The book includes eight pages of illustrations.

Eight Essays

Society and Culture in Early Modern France

Arlette Farge

Thomas Scott-Railton

Discusses the experience and rewards of archival research, while considering the practical aspects of research methodology and the challenges of writing history using archival sources.

The Allure of the Archives

Arnault Du Tilh

Martin Guerre

The clever peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost won his case, when a man with a wooden leg swaggered into the French courtroom, denounced du TiIh, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. This book, by the noted historian who served as a consultant for the film, adds new dimensions to this famous legend.

The Return of Martin Guerre

Frente a quienes defienden una concepción clásica de la historia, en virtud de la cual el historiador sería un experto que se situaría fuera de su objeto, toda la obra y la vida misma de Natalie Zemon Davis nos muestran otro «estilo»: el de una historiadora mundialmente reconocida por sus estudios sobre los siglos XVI y XVII que dialoga con los personajes que estudia, tratando de comprender su mundo, sus emociones, sus palabras, sus gestos. Natalie Zemon Davis ha inventado, en efecto, un arte particular de interrogar al pasado, a la modernidad, un pasado repleto de hombres y de mujeres que ella se esfuerza por rescatar del olvido. Del impostor Arnaud du Tilh al verdadero Martin Guerre, del sistema del don en el Renacimiento a la historia de las mujeres, sus estudios exhuman una humanidad plural de pensamientos y prácticas, de sensibilidades y esperanzas, de sufrimientos y desdichas, de simulaciones y emociones. Este libro es un diálogo de Natalie Zemon Davis con Denis Crouzet, profesor de Historia del siglo XVI en la Sorbona, prestigioso especialista en las guerras de religión. La historiadora cuenta cómo siempre ha querido que sus investigaciones fueran una dicha, la del descubrimiento. Ha querido, profundizando en este placer, ahondar en su propia historia, la de una familia judía originaria de la Europa el Este que se integra con pasión en el gran continente americano. Relata también hasta qué punto su vida, sus compromisos de ciudadana y de mujer, son para ella un aprendizaje continuo que va más allá de las certidumbres. Nos muestra una enseñanza también comprometida con una escritura que trata de transmitir a sus lectores un mensaje de esperanza, para decirles que la historia no está clausurada, que lo trágico siempre puede ser sorteado...

Entrevista con Denis Crouzet

Pasión por la historia

L'home conegut com a Lleó l'Africà, autor de la primera geografia d'Àfrica, va nàixer com al-Hasan al-Wazzan en una família musulmana que el 1492 va deixar Granada pel Marroc. Natalie Zemon Davis descriu cada època de la seua dramàtica vida amb abundància de detalls, i escruta les proves que ens queden dels moviments d'al-Hasan entre dos mons culturals, entre la tradició àrab i islàmica i les societats cristianes i les comunitats jueves d'Europa. El remarcable treball de Davis suggereix que les experiències i els escrits d'aquest aventurer que travessava fronteres testifiquen les connexions, i fins i tot relacions íntimes, que podien donar-se entre persones que vivien en un món dividit, i també exemplifiquen les moltes formes que tenien els individus de negociar les barreres culturals i fusionar tradicions divergents.

Un viajero entre dos mundos

León el africano

Presents the story of Leo Africanus and his famous sixteenth-century geography of Africa that was to introduce the continent to European readers, in a detailed history that documents such elements of his life as his imprisonment by the pope, work as a Christian writer, and relationships with powerful individuals from a range of cultures and religions.

A Sixteenth-century Muslim Between Worlds

Trickster Travels

K. J. P. Lowe

Ben Vinson (III.)

"This publication accompanies the exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, held at the Walters Art Museum from October 14, 2012, to January 21, 2013, and at the Princeton University Art Museum from February 16 to June 9, 2013."

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe

Acclaimed historian Natalie Zemon Davis's accessible and dramatic biography was widely hailed as a masterpiece and tells the story of Leo Africanus, a sixteenth-century Moroccan who embodies the rich and complex exchanges between Europe and Africa during the Renaissance. Trickster Travels offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and is a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work.

To receive a royal pardon in sixteenth-century France for certain kinds of homicide--unpremeditated, unintended, in self-defense, or otherwise excusable--a supplicant had to tell the king a story. These stories took the form of letters of remission, documents narrated to royal notaries by admitted offenders who, in effect, stated their case for pardon to the king. Thousands of such stories are found in French archives, providing precious evidence of the narrative skills and interpretive schemes of peasants and artisans as well as the well-born. This book, by one of the most acclaimed historians of our time, is a pioneering effort to us the tools of literary analysis to interpret archival texts: to show how people from different stations in life shaped the events of a crime into a story, and to compare their stories with those told by Renaissance authors not intended to judge the truth or falsity of the pardon narratives, but rather to refer to the techniques for crafting stories. A number of fascinating crime stories, often possessing Rabelaisian humor, are told in the course of the book, which consists of three long chapters. These chapters explore the French law of homicide, depictions of "hot anger" and self-defense, and the distinctive characteristics of women's stories of bloodshed. The book is illustrated with seven contemporary woodcuts and a facsimile of a letter of remission, with appendixes providing several other original documents. This volume is based on the Harry Camp Memorial Lectures given at Stanford University in 1986.

Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-century France

Fiction in the Archives

Henry Charles Lea Professor of History Emeritus Natalie Zemon Davis

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 African women of Suriname.

Natalie Zemon Davis

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