Volume 36, Number 4 · March 16, 1989
Alibi Alley
By Robert M. Adams
Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France
by Natalie Zemon Davis
Stanford University Press, 217 pp., $22.50
Mini-storia, mini-noia, say the sardonic, or perhaps just jealous, Italians: micro-history, a bit of a bore. It's a sneer effectually put to rest by Natalie Zemon Davis, who some years ago gave us a filmable, and indeed gripping, version of The Return of Martin Guerre, and who now presents, under the title of Fiction in the Archives, a rich selection from the pardon tales of sixteenth-century France. This is the raw stuff of popular culture, drawn from village and alley life itself; and the first thing to be said is that it makes rowdy, joyous reading. If Rabelais is fun (despite a good deal of earnest, erudite commentary in the opposite direction), if the Decameron is still read for pleasure, then Ms. Davis's stories are fun too.
Review, 1524 words
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