Carlo Ginzburg

October 12, 2004 1:16 AM

On The Dark Side of History - The historian Carlo Ginzburg talks about his publications and his historical method of microhistory which he pioneered. Ginzburg's most famous work is The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller--here's a review from the Journal of Peasant Studies in pdf form. Simon Schama listed it among his favorite history books, saying How can you not love a book which takes the cosmology of a heretical 16th-century miller who believes that God created the world as a kind of indeterminate cheese from which came angelic worms, and makes you believe in its plausibility ? Domenico Scandella ­ known as Menocchio is now a hero in his ancestral village and the subject of Menocchio, a play by Elizabeth Groag. And here is a review of Ginzburg's The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. See also The Benadanti, New Age Travellers and Medieval Night-Riders and On Hereditary Italian Witchcraft and Menocchio's Books--now there's an odd lot of fellow travellers.
posted by y2karl (5 comments total)

Schama had a little academic scuffle with Ginzburg over Dumézil's hardon for that mighty Wotan. I'm with Momigliano: Dumézil did have sympathy for the Devil, so to speak. anyway, good post, karl, thanks

Ginzburg's Latitude, Slaves and the Bible (abstract in .pdf)


OK, and now Italian-language-only links, sorry:

Ginzburg's "Occhiacci di Legno", with an excerpt

Rapporti di Forza
posted by matteo at 8:50 AM on October 12, 2004

I'd like to read an abstract of that abstract.
posted by Zurishaddai at 10:29 AM on October 12, 2004

All these years I've been dreaming of getting a writeup in the Journal of Peasant Studies, and this guy just waltzes right in. Bastard.
posted by mikrophon at 11:10 AM on October 12, 2004

Great post, y2karl. Thanks.
posted by homunculus at 12:31 PM on October 12, 2004

Yes, excellent, thank you. Another excellent microhistory is Montaillou : The Promised Land of Error which is the English title of Montaillou, Village Occitan de 1294 a 1324 by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. Here's an Amazon users list of other good microhistory titles.
posted by stbalbach at 7:53 PM on October 12, 2004