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spaceykate 's review for:
The Return of Martin Guerre
by Natalie Zemon Davis
informative
slow-paced
Recommended by a friend but posited much more like a psychological thriller / mystery premise than a historical retelling (this man that just returned from war says he's my husband and knows all these facts about his life, but doesn't look like him), but I'm not a quitter when it's the first book of the year. As another reviewer noted, it's a great microhistory from the perspective of providing relevant background for context of the original work/its time, including an index with references, and analyzing not just the topic but also the first authors on the topic and any biases which may have affected the text. It was engaging enough for a casual reader like myself with no background on the topic for those reasons, so three stars it is!
Summary: A quick (125pg) snapshot of a small French village's infamous case of identity theft in the 16th century that attempts to summarize both the original proceedings and provide a commentary on the original narrators/authors. Davis attempts to bring a fresh perspective to the legal case of Martin Guerre's identity (and whether an imposter had been living his life) through quoted historical collections, some of which add greater context around life & social norms in 16th century France than just reading the "official" accounting.
If I may, reader, go off...
The meat of this story, the question of how to prove identity in a time of low evidence (or more particularly, little trusted evidence) has an intriguing allegory to the public court of opinion in modern times, with the flourishment of generative AI and easily manipulated images, text, and audio-visual content. When one can easily create a doppelgänger video with relatively accurate voiceover from a public figure that has spent the majority of their relevant time in internet-connected spaces (thus allowing for a large body of content to be analyzed and potentially plagiarized from as a manner of assuming mannerisms of the individual in question), can you trust anything not seen in-person? And then the running additional layers of the text carrying the overarching religious themes between rising Protestants and Catholics, mirroring the widening gaps between the “left” and “right” wings throughout global politics (and how the meanings of even what a “moderate liberal” or “conservative Christian” translate to differ by region)… interesting to take within the context of today’s world. Oh, and the academic disputes on which texts are “accurate enough” to use when building the narratives of this particular story, with some authors arguing only certain pieces by figures of authority (i.e. courts run by the church) can be used as fact versus the stories captured from other stories — really brings the parallels home!
The quote from Coras in regards to his Altercacion translation of a dialogue between Hadrian and Epictetus is especially applicable when considering recent political candidates largely held in contempt of court and public opinion for the lies they have spread: “And in truth there is nothing between men more detestable than feigning and dissimulating, though our century is so unfortunate that in every estate, he who knows best how to refine his lies, his pretenses and his hypocrisy is often the most revered.”
Summary: A quick (125pg) snapshot of a small French village's infamous case of identity theft in the 16th century that attempts to summarize both the original proceedings and provide a commentary on the original narrators/authors. Davis attempts to bring a fresh perspective to the legal case of Martin Guerre's identity (and whether an imposter had been living his life) through quoted historical collections, some of which add greater context around life & social norms in 16th century France than just reading the "official" accounting.
If I may, reader, go off...
The quote from Coras in regards to his Altercacion translation of a dialogue between Hadrian and Epictetus is especially applicable when considering recent political candidates largely held in contempt of court and public opinion for the lies they have spread: “And in truth there is nothing between men more detestable than feigning and dissimulating, though our century is so unfortunate that in every estate, he who knows best how to refine his lies, his pretenses and his hypocrisy is often the most revered.”