Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents? In his answers, Ginzburg peels away layers of subsequent readings and interpretations that envelop every text to make a larger argument about history and fiction. Interwoven with compelling autobiographical references,
Threads and Traces bears moving witness to Ginzburg’s life as a European Jew, the abiding strength of his scholarship, and his deep engagement with the historian’s craft.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Description and Citation
2. The Conversion of the Jews of Minorca (A.D. 417–418)
3. Montaigne, Cannibals, and Grottoes
4. Proofs and Possibilities:
Postscript to Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
5. Paris, 1647: A Dialogue on Fiction and History
6. The Europeans Discover (or Rediscover) the Shamans
7. Tolerance and Commerce: Auerbach Reads Voltaire
8. Anacharsis Interrogates the Natives:
A New Reading of an Old Best Seller
9. Following the Tracks of Israël Bertuccio
10. The Bitter Truth: Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians
11. Representing the Enemy:
On the French Prehistory of the Protocols
12. Just One Witness:
The Extermination of the Jews and the Principle of Reality
13. Details, Early Plans, Microanalysis:
Thoughts on a Book by Siegfried Kracauer
14. Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It
15. Witches and Shamans
Notes
Index
About the author
Carlo Ginzburg is retired from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy). He is the author of numerous books that have been translated into English including The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.
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