I felt I had my own historical laboratory, generating not proofs, but historical possibilities.

Watching Gerard Depardieu feel his way into the role of the false Martin Guerre gave me new ways to think about the accomplishment of the real impostor, Arnaud du Tilh.

Writing for actors rather than readers raised new questions about the motivations of people in the sixteenth century-about, say, whether they cared as much about truth as about property. I was prompted to dig deeper into the case, to make historical sense of it. Paradoxically, the more I savored the creation of the film, the more my appetite was whetted for something beyond it. I was able to join them, and out of our collaboration came the film Le Retour de Martin Guerre. Vigne were starting a screenplay on the same subject. By coincidence I learned that the scenarist Jean-Claude Carriere and the director Daniel When I first read the judge's account I thought, 'This must become a film.' Rarely does a historian find so perfect a narrative structure in the events of the past or one with such dramatic popular appeal. It has inspired a play, two novels, and an operetta. Over the centuries it was retold in books on famous impostors and causes celebres, and is still remembered in the Pyrenean village of Artigat where the events took place four hundred years ago. All over France there were comments on it, by the great Montaigne among others. Two books were immediately written about the case, one by a judge of the court. The man almost persuades the court he is Martin Guerre, when at the last moment the true Martin Guerre appears. In the 1540s in Languedoc, a rich peasant leaves his wife, child, and property and is not heard from for years he comes back-or so everyone thinks-but after three or four years of agreeable marriage the wife says she has been tricked by an impostor and brings him to trial. The story of Martin Guerre has been recounted many times.

Of a historian's adventure with a different way of telling about the past. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Davis, Natalie Zemon, 1928-The return of Martin Guerre. Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, EnglandĬopyright © 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The Return of Martin Guerre Natalie Zemon Davis

The return of martin guerre davis