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A review by vreadsabook
The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller by Carlo Ginzburg
4.0
The Cheese and the Worms was very interesting on a personal, pleasure-reading, level. Ginzburg does a fantastic job recreating the world of Menocchio, the 16th century miller, while also still telling of his plight in a very narrative fashion that was engaging.
On the other hand, I feel that Ginzburg has met mixed success in supporting some of his claims. I think he goes a good job of backing up his point that there was certainly not a top-down only creation of culture during the 16th century but also that there was in fact a deep but syncretic rift between the worlds of peasant and ruler.
That said, at the same time I think that, if Ginzburg had intentions of elucidating what exactly was in this peasant popular culture, he doesn't do a particular good job. The case of Menocchio, even in comparison with other similar cases, simply does not provide us with enough evidence about where their "novel" ideas came from, or even, I think, definitively make the claim that their ideas were not indeed novel ideas to each of the millers in the study.
Nonetheless, the fact that the book was so darn engaging is ultimately what shines about the book. It's often hard to make archival research so engaging and accessible and Ginzburg shines at both with this work.
On the other hand, I feel that Ginzburg has met mixed success in supporting some of his claims. I think he goes a good job of backing up his point that there was certainly not a top-down only creation of culture during the 16th century but also that there was in fact a deep but syncretic rift between the worlds of peasant and ruler.
That said, at the same time I think that, if Ginzburg had intentions of elucidating what exactly was in this peasant popular culture, he doesn't do a particular good job. The case of Menocchio, even in comparison with other similar cases, simply does not provide us with enough evidence about where their "novel" ideas came from, or even, I think, definitively make the claim that their ideas were not indeed novel ideas to each of the millers in the study.
Nonetheless, the fact that the book was so darn engaging is ultimately what shines about the book. It's often hard to make archival research so engaging and accessible and Ginzburg shines at both with this work.