In Davis’ telling, the protagonist is not so much Arnaud du Tilh, but is, in fact, Bertrande de Rols, the wife of Martin Guerre. Natalie Zemon Davis, in her book The Return of Martin Guerre, approaches the story from a fresh perspective, hoping to link the impostor’s ruse with the creation of personal identity, and in doing so, shorten the gap between sixteenth century French peasants and the upper class. As a result, a traditional version of the story quickly developed that focused on the cunning of the impostor, Arnaud du Tilh, and his “marvelous deception.” Only two contemporary sources exist that speak directly to the case, and from these sources all subsequent versions of the story derive.
The events occurred over four hundred years ago in rural France, and few of the participants had the capacity to write.
It is a remarkable psychological narrative about where self-fashioning stops and lying begins.For the academic historian, the faithful retelling of the story of Martin Guerre is a treacherous exercise. We sense the secret affinity between the eloquent men of law and the honey-tongued village impostor, a rare identification across class lines.ĭeftly written to please both the general public and specialists, The Return of Martin Guerre will interest those who want to know more about ordinary families and especially women of the past, and about the creation of literary legends. We learn what happens when common people get involved in the workings of the criminal courts in the ancient regime, and how judges struggle to decide who a man was in the days before fingerprints and photographs.
Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate 16th-century villagers. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre.
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