Take a photo of a barcode or cover
tombomp 's review for:
The Return of Martin Guerre
by Natalie Zemon Davis
informative
"When I was a boy I saw the account of a trial of a strange event printed by Coras, a learned counsel in Toulouse, concerning two men who each passed himself off for the other. What I remember of it (and I remember nothing else) is that it seemed to me at the time that Coras had made the impersonation on the part of the one he deemed guilty to be so miraculous and so far exceeding our own experience and his own as judge, that I found a great deal of boldness in the verdict which condemned the man to be hanged. Let us (more frankly and more simply than the judges of the Areopagus, who when they found themselves hemmed in by a case which they could not unravel decreed that the parties should appear before them again a hundred years later) accept for a verdict a formula which declares, ‘The Court does not understand anything whatever about this case.'" - On Lameness by Michel de Montaigne
A slightly frustrating book, but it's unfair that I'm faulting it for the limited nature of the sources we have. It leaves you with many, many questions, none of which can possibly be answered. Why did the Guerres move from their original home? Why did Martin Guerre commit the petty familial theft that made him leave the village? Why did he take the journey he did? How did the impostor find out about his leaving and decide to act as him, all those years after he left? How did he convince people who'd known the real one that he was him and why did they fall for it? If he was known as a scoundrel in his original life, what made him turn over a new leaf? Did Pierre Guerre have doubts all along and was his accusation a cynical reaction to his accounting being investigated, or did some new evidence come to light? What caused the original sentence at the first court to come against the impostor? Was the evidence when taken to appeal truly so exculpatory of the impostor, or was that just part of turning it into a more miraculous story? Why did Martin Guerre return? Did he find out what was going on in advance? How on earth did husband and wife reconcile after decades apart when the wife had been with the impostor? No answers are possible outside best guesses. By the end I was a little disappointed but again it's just inevitable with the subject of the book, which is admittedly fascinating.
There were some other frustrations though. There's quite a few times she just uses French untranslated - logical if the audience is other French historians, but this seems to have been aimed at a slightly wider audience. There's often quite a bit of just listing names and places which is important but I sort of just glossed over. On a more major structural level, I felt that the 2 texts that are the sources of the narrative should have been brought in and quoted directly more often. It's often a little unclear what she's basing things on and, although she adds contextual detail, I sometimes felt like I'd rather just read the original narratives with all their issues and biases. Although she might fix some issues by reading them critically, she's still imposing her own narrative of what happened like they were, and I'm not sure hers is better exactly. Very difficult question though, and an issue that's inevitable in a project like this. It was an interesting read, just a difficult subject.
A slightly frustrating book, but it's unfair that I'm faulting it for the limited nature of the sources we have. It leaves you with many, many questions, none of which can possibly be answered. Why did the Guerres move from their original home? Why did Martin Guerre commit the petty familial theft that made him leave the village? Why did he take the journey he did? How did the impostor find out about his leaving and decide to act as him, all those years after he left? How did he convince people who'd known the real one that he was him and why did they fall for it? If he was known as a scoundrel in his original life, what made him turn over a new leaf? Did Pierre Guerre have doubts all along and was his accusation a cynical reaction to his accounting being investigated, or did some new evidence come to light? What caused the original sentence at the first court to come against the impostor? Was the evidence when taken to appeal truly so exculpatory of the impostor, or was that just part of turning it into a more miraculous story? Why did Martin Guerre return? Did he find out what was going on in advance? How on earth did husband and wife reconcile after decades apart when the wife had been with the impostor? No answers are possible outside best guesses. By the end I was a little disappointed but again it's just inevitable with the subject of the book, which is admittedly fascinating.
There were some other frustrations though. There's quite a few times she just uses French untranslated - logical if the audience is other French historians, but this seems to have been aimed at a slightly wider audience. There's often quite a bit of just listing names and places which is important but I sort of just glossed over. On a more major structural level, I felt that the 2 texts that are the sources of the narrative should have been brought in and quoted directly more often. It's often a little unclear what she's basing things on and, although she adds contextual detail, I sometimes felt like I'd rather just read the original narratives with all their issues and biases. Although she might fix some issues by reading them critically, she's still imposing her own narrative of what happened like they were, and I'm not sure hers is better exactly. Very difficult question though, and an issue that's inevitable in a project like this. It was an interesting read, just a difficult subject.