Readings
Ravel, Jeffrey S. The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder, and Justice in Seventeenth-Century France. Houghton Mifflin, 2008. ISBN: 9780618197316.
Revel, Jacques. “Microanalysis and the Construction of the Social.” In Revel, Jacques, and Lynn Hunt. Histories: French Constructions of the Past. New Press, 1998, pp. 492-502. ISBN: 9781565844353.
Bell, David A. “Total History and Microhistory: The French and Italian Paradigms.” In Kramer, Lloyd, and Sarah Maza. A Companion to Western Historical Thought. Blackwell, 2006, pp. 262-276. ISBN: 9781405149617.
Questions
Using the example of The Would-Be Commoner, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of micro-historical methodology. How is this perspective more satisfying than the national, borderlands, and global approaches we have studied in recent weeks? In what ways is it less compelling? (Don’t worry about being critical - The Would-Be Commoner will likely be my only foray into micro-history, and I am acutely aware of the book’s shortcomings.)
Partial Bibliography
Levi, Giovanni. “On Microhistory.” In Burke, Peter. New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, pp. 93-113. ISBN: 9780271021171.
Geertz, Clifford. “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, 1977, pp. 412-453. ISBN: 9780465097197.
Darnton, Robert. “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint Séverin.” The Great Cat Massacre. Basic Books, 2009, pp. 75-107. ISBN: 9780465012749.
[See also the following critiques:
Chartier, Roger. “Texts, Symbols, and Frenchness.” Journal of Modern History 57 (December 1985): 682-695.
LaCapra, Dominick. “Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre.” Journal of Modern History 60 (March 1988): 95-112.
Mah, Harold. “Suppressing the Text: The Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre.” History Workshop Journal 31 (1991): 1-20.]
Farge, Arlette, and Jacques Revel. The Vanishing Children of Paris: Rumor and Politics Before the French Revolution. Translated by Claudia Miéville. Harvard University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780674931947.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Harvard University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780674766914.
Farr, James R. A Tale of Two Murders: Passion and Power in Seventeenth-Century France. Duke University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780822334712.
Tackett, Timothy. When the King Took Flight. Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780674016422.
Clifford, James. “Identity in Mashpee.” The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780674698437.
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Translated by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780801843877.
Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. Translated by Barbara Bray. George Braziller, 2008. ISBN: 9780807615980.
Spence, Jonathan. The Death of Woman Wang. Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN: 9780140051216.
Kuhn, Philip A. Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768. Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780674821521.
Muir, Edward, and Guido Ruggiero. Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe: Selections from Quaderni Storici. Translated by Eren Branch. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780801841835.
