natalie davis, historian and literary uses

7/27/2019 Natalie Davis, Historian and Literary Uses

1/8

The Historian and Literary UsesAuthor(s): Natalie Zemon DavisSource: Profession, (2003), pp. 21-27Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595753.

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2/8

The Historian

and

Literary

Uses

NATALIE ZEMON

DAVIS

What

has

been

your

engagement

with literature?

Stephen

Greenblatt

asked

me.

Why

do

you

keep coming

back

time

and

again

to

Rabelais?

I

pondered,

and

realized that the

answer was

not

straightforward.

I

have al

ways

found

Rabelais

a

pleasure

to

read

and have

marveled

at

the

surprises

in each new reading. But over the years I changed inmy relation to those

surprises

and

to

their

use

in

my

work.

So

my

answer

is

a

history,

a

personal

history,

but

one,

I

think,

characteristic

of the

experience

of other

social his

torians

of

my

generation

or

younger

who

began

to

relate

to

literature

in

a

new

way.

As

a

graduate

student

and

in

my

first decade

as a

social

historian,

I

used

texts

of all

kinds

to

get

at

the

history

of

the

Reformation

in

Lyon.

I

wanted

to

find

out

why

printing

workers,

other

artisans,

and

women

joined

the

Protestant movement and whether Karl Marx orMax Weber was

right.

I

wanted

to

find

out

whether

religion played

a

role

in

the

reform

of charita

ble

institutions

the

way

R. H.

Tawney

had

claimed. To

these

ends

I

looked

in

archives,

at tax

records,

militia

lists,

poor-relief

rolls,

and

much

more.

In

the

libraries

I

considered

tracts

and

sermons,

polemical

songs,

popular

plays

and

poems,

arithmetic

books,

medical

books?anything

relevant

in

the

outpouring

of

vernacular

books

from

the

printing

presses

of

sixteenth

century Lyon

and

elsewhere. And

there

were

what

I

would

have called

the

literary

texts,

the

fictional

or

nonfictional

writings

of

educated

persons

The

author

is

Henry

Charles Lea

Professor f

istory

Emeritus

at

Princeton

University.

A

version

of

this

paper

was

presented

t

the 002MLA

conventionn

ew York.

21

Profession 2003

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3/8

22

HI

HE HISTORIAN

AND

LITERARY

SES

with

high

craft and

wide-ranging goals:

the

five books

of

Frangois

Rabelais,

the

stories of

Marguerite

de

Navarre,

the

essays

of

Michel de

Montaigne.

For

none

of these

texts

did

I

explore

in

any depth

their

crafting

or

their

genre

or

other

literary

matters.

For

the archival

texts,

I

asked the histo

rian's

usual

questions:

Is

this

a

forged

text?

What kind of

document

is

this?

What

has

been

omitted?

For

all the

texts,

I

asked

the historian's

usual

ques

tion: From what

point

of

view

has this been

written?

That

is,

is it

a

work

by

a

Protestant,

Catholic,

or someone

in

between?

by

a man or

a

woman?

by

a

rich

physician,

humanist

priest,

or

proud

printing

worker?

These

were

the

questions

I

thought

I

needed

to

ask

if

I

wanted

to

use

these texts as sources forwhat was going on inLyon and in sixteenth-century

France

more

generally

and forwhat attitudes

people

had

there

toward

life,

religion,

and social

matters.

The

literary

figures

I

took

to

be

especially

expert

and

sensitive

as

observers of their

times

and,

in

their

expression

of

opinion,

pithy

and

penetrating.

Thus,

when Rabelais had

Doctor

Rondibilis affirm

that

men

had

many

things

they

could do

to

control the

pricks

of

venery

but

women

with their

hysteric

animal within could

rarely

keep

themselves from

cuckolding

their

husbands

(373;

qtd.

in

Davis,

Society

88-89),

I

took that

as a

strong formulation of a long-held medical view.When Erasmus asked,

What else

is

a

city

but

a

great

monastery?

{Enchiridion,

vol.

3,

column

346;

qtd.

in

Davis

62),

I

took

it

as a

powerful

vision of

urban life rom

a

man

at

the

center

of

new

humanist reflection.When

the

Lyonnaise

poet

Louise

Labe

in

1555 asked

women

to lift their

minds

a

little

above their distaffs

and

spindles

...

to

apply

themselves

to

science

and

learning

(3-4;

qtd.

in

Davis

74),

I

saw

her

as an

important

voice

at

the

margins

of

female reflection.

In

the late

1960s

and

early

1970s,

I

realized that

as a

historian

I

had

to

add to this search for observations of events and

expressions

of attitude

and look

at

texts?literary

ones

and others?in

other

ways.

Partly

I

was

spending

time

with

colleagues

whose work

in

literature

had

wide cultural

resonance.

Among

them

were

Barbara

Lewalski,

at

Brown,

who

got

me

thinking

about

genre,

and

Rosalie

Colie,

at

Toronto,

who showed

me

how

a

form

like

paradox

could

surface

in

many

different

places.

I

took

a

first draft

of

my

Reasons

of

Misrule

to

her?a

study

of

charivaris

and

carnivalesque

inversion?and

she

said

I

had

to

read

an

essay

on

Rabelais

just appearing by

a man

named Mikhail

Bakhtin.

Then

I

was

at

Berkeley

when Greenblatt

ar

rived

early

n

his

life f

teaching

nd

writing,

nd

I

followed

with

delight

how he drew

a

network

of connections

leading

to

Renaissance

Self-Fashioning.

In

addition,

new

issues

were

posed by

the

events

and

practices

I

was

dis

covering

in

my

sources.

I

was

working

on

printers

and

printing history;

I

had

sixteenth-century

books

often

in

my

hand.

These

objects

could

not

be

looked

at

just

as

a

repository

of themes

and

observations;

they

were

also

a

form

of



4/8

NATALIE

ZEMON

DAVIS

|||

23

communication,

ameans

of

establishing relationships

among

writers,

print

ers,

readers,

listeners.

I

was

working

on

le

menu

peuple

and

peasants

and

needed

very scrap

of evidence

I

could

find

to

write

their

history.

Oral

culture

was a

precious

source,

when

I

could

find

its

traces

in

proverbs

and

popular

lore. But itbecame clear

that

the difference between the

oral

expression

and

the

printed

text

was not

just

in

point

of

view

or

in

content

but

also

in

how

and

when

a statement

was

made and

the

kind

of

authority

it

carried. This realiza

tion hit

me

especially

when

I

was

reviewing

Emmanuel

Le

Roy

Ladurie's

Montaillou.

Out

of

curiosity,

I

read the

early

fourteenth-century

Inquisition

records

on

which

he based his remarkable

portrait

of

that

Pyrenean

village.

I

was struck by the detail about events long past and the narrative flairwith

which

the

villagers

answered the

straightforward

questions

of

the

inquisitor:

Twenty-five

years ago

[said

one

woman],

at

harvest

time,

I

was

going

with

my

mother

to

cut

the

grain

in

a

field

belonging

to

my

father

at

the

other

end of

the

village.

I

said

to

my

mother,

Where is

my

brother

Pons?

My

mother answered that

Pons

had

gone

with

her

brother

. .

.

Prades

over

the hill

of

Marmore

to

see

Dame

Stephanie.

.. .

hen

my

brother Pons

showed

up

at

the

field

...

I

said

to

him

and

my

mother,

What

is

Uncle

Prades doing with Stephanie? Why, because of her, ishe ruining his

household and his

weaver's loom and

selling

his

goods? They responded

that Prades and

Dame

Stephanie

wanted

to

go

together

to

Barcelona

. ..

for

les Bonhommes. Who

are

the

Bonhommes?

I

asked,

and

my

mother answered that

they

were

the

men

whom

some

called

heretics,

but

who

were

good

nonetheless

and

sent

souls

to

Paradise.

(Duvernoy

334-35;

qtd.

in

Davis,

Conteurs

70;

trans,

mine)

I

entitled

my

review Les

conteurs

de

Montaillou

( the

storytellers

of

Montaillou )

and forever

changed

my

attitude toward the uses of such texts

from

the

past.

Like

oral

culture,

ritual

and

festive forms

were

another

valuable

source

for

the

life

of

the lower orders.

But

how

to

make

sense

of

them?

The

possibilities

of

the festive

genre

had

to

be

explored

from

many

angles.

One

had

to

inquire

not

only

what,

say,

the charivari said and what

episode

triggered

it

but

also

what

form

it

took,

when

it

was

done,

the

rules

that

governed

it,

nd

what differ

ence

itmade.

Finally, by 1980,1

was

starting

to

plan

and

help

write the scenario

for

a

feature

film

and had

to

face the

question

of

fictionalizing

straight

on.

Some of

my

questions

could

be

clarified

by

ethnographic

information

and

interpretive

approaches

drawn from

anthropology.

All

of them

could

benefit from

ways

of

thinking

familiar

to

one or

another

branch

of

literary

studies. Therefore

I

added

to

my

quest

for

observations

and

expressions

of

opinion

another

set

of

goals:

from

now

on,

I

would

look

for

crafting

and

the

rules

of

genre

in

texts

both

inside and

outside the

bounds

of

literature

and



5/8

24

III

HE

HISTORIAN

AND

LITERARY SES

fiction.

I

would

perceive

all

texts

and

acts

described in

texts as

relational,

addressed

to

someone

else,

and received

and

interpreted

by

different

audi

ences.

(Even

the

secrets

of

a

diary?say,

the

antics

of

a

rural

Normandy

gentleman

ciphered

in

Greek

letters?assumed

God

as

a

reader.)

Further,

I

would

look

not

only

at

how

information

or

attitudes

or

teach

ings

circulated

in

society

but

also

at

how motifs and forms

surfaced

in

multi

ple milieus?though

in

all likelihood

with different

emphases,

uses,

and

receptions.

Though

I

explored

the

charivari

primarily

in

the

village youth

abbeys

and

urban

neighborhoods

of artisans

and

traders,

I still

could also

note

that

Mere

Folle

of

Dijon

had

followers

among

the

lawyers

of

its Par

lement. I could reflect on Erasmus's Stultitia as theQueen ofMisrule, and

even

wonder

whether

the

play

in

Hamlet

could

not

be

seen

as

a charivari of

the

young

against

a

grotesque

and

unseemly

remarriage {Society

123).

Finally,

I

could

now

conceive the

movement

to

expression,

oral and

written,

as

an

innovative

action

in

itself,

one

to

be examined

along

with the

content

of

what

was

said.

As

I

look

back

on

my

own

writings,

I

can

recall the

sense

of

excitement

I

had when

I

realized

how

these

approaches

were

helping

me

understand

the

past

and tell about itmore

effectively.

With The Return

of

artin

Guerre,

I

realized

how

important

was

the

shaping

of

an

event

into

a

story,

the

story

told

by

the learned

judge

who sentenced the

impostor

to

be

burned

so

his

memory

would

be effaced

forever

(Coras

132;

qtd.

in

Davis,

Return

89,

94;

trans,

mine)

and

the

story

told

in

the

villages

of

Martin

Guerre and Arnaud

du

Tilh?all of

them

touched

by

and

transforming

earlier

narratives.

With

Fiction in

the

Archives,

my

excitement

came

with the

idea

itself

of

the

proj

ect.

We

are

short

on

sources

for

storytelling techniques

in

French

villages

of the sixteenth

century;

the

learned

collectors

like

Charles

Perrault and

Mademoiselle

Lheritier

date

from the late seventeenth and

early eigh

teenth

century.

Suddenly

I

saw

that

the

royal

letters

of

pardon

or

remission

for

homicide,

from

which I had

copious

notes

directed

to

discerning

pat

terns

of

violence

and

popular

customs

in

the

sixteenth

century,

could also

provide

evidence

for

styles

of

storytelling

among peasants,

artisans,

and

others.

The

letter of remission

was

a

composite

construction,

with

notaries

and legal formulas and rules playing their role, but the pardon seeker's

voice

could

still

be

followed

as

it

crafted

a

believable

tale.

Indeed,

the

story

had

to

be believable

or

at

least

supportable

by neighbors

and

retellable

aloud

by

the

pardon

seeker,

or

the

letterwould

never

be

registered.

With

Women

on

the

Margins,

my

new

quest

brought

fresh

insight

into

the

seventeenth-century

women

whom

I

had

been

discussing

with

my

students

for

twenty

years.

We had

read

together

the

autobiographies

ofGlikl bas

Ju

dah Leib

(so-called

Gluckel

of

Hameln)

and

Marie

Guyart

de

l'lncarnation,



6/8

NATALIE

ZEMON DAVIS

|||

5

and

we

had

looked

at

pictures

of

the

Surinamese insects

and

plants

drawn

by

Maria

Sibylla

Merian.

Now when

I

came

to

write

about

them,

I

realized what

revelations lay

in

their

movement

into

expression

and

in

how

and

where

they

told

their stories. For

Glikl,

the

novelty

was

coupling

her

Yiddish

life

story

with

folk

tales? that

reminds

me

of

a

story ?which

raised

questions

about

suffering

and allowed

her

to

argue

with God

(53, 59-60).

If

a

seventeenth

century

rabbi could

intersperse

his

sermon

with homilies and

parables,

she

could

do

the

same

in her

book for

her children.

For Marie

de

Plncarnation,

the

move

into

writing

in

Algonquian

and

Iroquoian

languages

allowed

her

to

broach divine

topics

thought

unsuitable

for

a

European

woman.

In my current project, a study of theman known in Europe as Leo

Africanus,

the

tools

of

the

literary

scholar

and

folklorist much advanced

my

understanding.

The archival

traces

of al-Hasan ibnMuhammad

al-Wazzan

exist but

are

scanty;

his

own

writings

in

Italian,

Latin,

and

Arabic

are

the

best clues

to

his

ways

of

thinking,

creating,

and

scheming.

Composed

for

Italian

and

European

readers

during

his

years

as

a

Christian

in

Italy

of the

1520s,

they

are

full

of

tricks,

omissions,

and

unusual forms

of

self-reference.

His

account

of

the different

regions

of

Africa,

its

peoples

and

customs?

published

in revised formmuch later as La descrizione delf

Africa?is

fascinat

ing;

but the

choices

he

made

in

writing

his

manuscript

in

his

foreigner's

Italian

take

us

closer

to

the

author

living

between

two

worlds

(see

Ramusio).

How

have

historians

responded

to

such

a

literary approach?

A

good

number have followed

the

same

trajectory

as

mine,

have had

similar chal

lenges

in

their

work,

and

have found their

own

impressive

literary

and

eth

nographic

solutions. Some

have reacted with

unease

and

even

outright

rejection.

Lawrence

Stone

truly enjoyed my

Fiction

in

the

Archives

about

the

pardon

tales,

which

was

dedicated

to

him

as

historian

par

excellence,

and

storyteller

too. But

why

did

I

have

to

spoil

the title with

that

word

fiction ?

No

matter

how

carefully

I

tried

to

define fiction

as

forming,

shaping,

and

molding

rather than

falsifying

or

feigning

and

to

celebrate

pardon

stories

as

a new

source

of evidence

rather

than

as

an

undermining

of

evidence,

some

historians still

are

troubled

by

that fluid

border.

My sharpest

critic

was

Robert

Finlay,

who

attacked

The

Return

of

Martin Guerre in the pages ofthe American Historical Review. He found

especially

objectionable

my

use

of

the

term

self-fashioning :

Pervasive

and

tendentious,

the

concept

is

merely

imposed

on

the

historical

record

as an

ingenious

assertion,

a

modish

way

of

viewing

sixteenth-century

peasants

(564).

In

my

answer,

I

reviewed

my

ample

evidence

on

peas

ants'

changing

their

names,

customs,

languages,

and

abodes.

I

also

re

minded

Finlay

that

self-fashioning

was

not

only

a

term

developed

brilliantly

by

Greenblatt,

it

had

also been

used

by

Montaigne,

whom I



7/8

26

III

HE

HISTORIAN

AND

LITERARY

SES

had

cited

as

well:

On

s'y

forme,

on

s'y

fagonne

. .

.

car

la

dissimulation

est

des

plus

notables

qualitez

de

ce

siecle

(649;

Men

form

and

fashion

themselves

.

. .

,

for

dissimulation

is

among

the

most

notable

qualities

of

this

century

[505];

both

qtd.

in

Davis,

On

the

Lame

589).

Indeed,

Montaigne,

Rabelais,

Marguerite

de

Navarre,

and their like

are

still

with

me

as

when

I

was

young.

I

still

go

to

them

as

privileged

observers

of and listeners

to

theworlds around them.

For

my

recent

study

The

Gift

in

Sixteenth-Century

France,

all three added

important interpretations

to

the

gift

practices

that

I

had

dug

up

from

wills,

inter vivos

donations,

journals,

and

the like.Whenever

I

think

I

have

discovered

something

new

about

the

sixteenth century, I go back to reading Rabelais: I figure that ifhe has not

at

least

caught

a

whiff of what

I

have

found,

I

had

better

check

again.

At

this

very

moment

Rabelais

is

waiting

to

join

me

in

telling

about

al-Hasan

al-Wazzan,

my

crafty

traveler

in

search of

his

own

oracles.

WORKS CITED

Coras, Jean

de.

Arrest

memorable du

parlement

de Tholose. Contenant

une

histoire

prodi

gieuse

d'un

mary,

adveniie de

nostre

temps.

Paris: Galliot du

Pre,

1572.

Davis,

Natalie Zemon. Les

conteurs

de Montaillou.

Trans.

Marie-Noelle

Bourguet.

AnnalesE.S.C.

34.1

(1979):

61-73.

-.

Fiction

in

theArchives:

Pardon Tales and Their

Tellers

in

Sixteenth-Century

France.

Harry Camp

Lectures

at

Stanford

U. Stanford: Stanford

UP,

1987.

-.

The

Gift

in

Sixteenth-Century

France.

Madison:

U

of

Wisconsin

P,

2000.

-.

On

the

Lame.

American

Historical

Review 93

(1988):

572-603.

-.

The Return

of

Martin Guerre:

Imposture

and

Identity

in

a

Sixteenth-Century

Village. Cambridge:

Harvard

UP,

1983.

-.

Society

and

Culture

in

Early

Modern

France.

Stanford: Stanford

UP,

1975.

-.

Women

on

the

Margins:

Three

Seventeenth-Century

Lives.

Cambridge:

Belknap

HarvardUP,

1995.

Duvernoy,

Jean,

ed.

Le

Registre

dlnquisition

de

Jacques

Fourner,

eveque

de

Pamiers

(1318

1325).

Vol

1.

oulouse:

Privat,

1965.

Finlay,

Robert.

The

Refashioning

of

Martin

Guerre. American

Historical

Review

93

(1988):

553-71.

Greenblatt,

Stephen.

Renaissance

Self-Fashioning:

From

More

to

Shakespeare. Chicago:

U

ofChicago P,

1980.

Labe,

Louise. (Euvres

de Louise

Lobe. Ed.

P.

Blanchemain.

Paris:

Lib. des

Bibliophiles,

1875.

Ladurie,

Emmanuel

Le

Roy.

Montaillou,

village

occitan de

1294

a

1324. Paris:

Gallimard,

1975.

Montaigne,

Michel de. (Euvres

completes.

Ed. Albert

Thibaudet and

Maurice

Rat.

Paris:

Gallimard,

1962.

The

Complete

Works

of

ontaigne.

Trans. Donald

Frame.

Stanford:

Stanford

P,

1948.

Rabelais,

Francois.

The

Histories

ofGargantua

and

Pantagruel.

Trans.

J.

M. Cohen.

Har

mondsworth:

Penguin,

1957.



8/8

NATALIE

ZEMON

DAVIS

|||

27

Ramusio,

Giovanni Battista.

Navigazioni

e

viaggi.

Ed.

Marica Milanesi.

Turin:

Einaudi,

1978. 19-460.

Vol.

1

ol Delia descrizione

deWAfrica

er

GiovanLioni

Africano.

Stone,

Lawrence.

Conversation

with the author.

1987.

Tawney, Richard Henry. Religion and theRise ofCapitalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.

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