Analysis Of The Return Of Martin Guerre By Natalie Zemon Davis

The Return of Martin Guerre, written by Natalie Zemon Davis, is the tale of a court case that takes place in sixteenth century France. Martin Guerre is a peasant who deserted his wife and family for many years. While Martin Guerre is gone, a man named Arnaud du Tilh arrives at Martin’s village and claims to be Martin Guerre. Bertrande, who is Guerre’s wife, Guerre’s sisters, and many of the villagers, accepts the imposter. After almost three years of being happily married, Bertrande takes the fraud to court under pressure of Pierre Guerre, her stepfather and Guerre’s brother. Arnaud du Tilh is almost declared innocent, but the real Martin Guerre appears in the courthouse. Throughout this tale, many factors of the peasant life are

Starting with the premodern society and moving on to our modern society I will compare and contrast the two societies.

The characters in the novel Tomorrow When the War Began (TWTWB) (1993) begin as very human, very believable and, very ordinary. Then their lives are changed in an instant and they are forced to respond, to change, to grow and to adapt.. The characterisation is so well done that Ellie, Robyn, Fi, Homer, Chris, Corrie, Kevin and Lee become real to the reader, and you find yourself relating to them as you would actual people. Author John Marsden creates characters based on Australia’s unique multicultural society in TWTWB. The novel is based on an Australian town where John Marsden uses stereotypes as the main characters. They start out as fairly stereotypical examples of teenagers, but they undergo a character metamorphosis as the story progresses. Characters such as Homer, first introduced as a very stereotypical law-breaking teenager often seen in todays society, undergoes a transformation into a strong leader as the story develops.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the book "The Return of Martin Guerre" by Natalie Zamon Davis. Specifically, it will discuss the life of the peasant during the Middle Ages. This book is a fascinating account of a true case that happened during the 16th century in France. The book is also an excellent example of how the peasants lived in the Middle Ages, from what they ate, to how they traveled and what their family lives were like.

Disregarding Monsieur Valmonde’s caution to consider Desiree’s uncertain ethnicity, Armonde calls for corbeille, or wedding gifts, from Paris, insisting that Desiree’s background was not concerning to him as “he could give her one of the oldest and proudest names in Louisiana” (Chopin 422). With this statement, Chopin reveals Armand’s belief that his name alone would give Desiree a respectable and unquestionable identity.

Martin Guerre takes place in 16th century southern France, in a village called Artigat where the Guerre family is highly respected and is one of the leading families. Davis takes the story first of when the Basque Guerre’s arrive in Artigat and their quick assent in the village society. Davis explains that Martin’s father, Sanxi, arranged a political marriage with another high end family, the De Rols. The marriage occurred when Martin was just fourteen and Bertrande was ten. Davis does point out that even in the 16th century that was young. Davis shows the reader what life was probably like. She moves through their lives of Martin running away, his return twelve years later, and finally the imposer 's trial and execution.

Our identities are key to our understanding of the world. Mental models through which information is processed are built off of life experience, taught ethics and morals, and upbringing. Identity is discussed in the following texts - The Politics of Exile by Elizabeth Dauphinee, “Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence” by Suzy Hansen, and “Letter to America” by Aida Hozic - through various themes of American culture. Dauphinee, in particular, examines the depth of personal identity and its ability to change. All three works consider the many components of personal identity and its formation as well as its undoing.

Natalie Zemon-Davis’s 1983 book The Return of Martin Guerre provided both the public and academic world with a fresh and interesting take on a classic story. Presented like a mystery thriller, Davis weaves a tale of deception based on a solid framework of cultural history. Her narrative depends on grounding the characters of Bertrande de Rols, Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tihl, and their associates within a web of social context. Davis draws heavily on the traditional Coras narrative, but also supplements the established story with the version presented in Le Sueur, a new source she discovered. Additionally, she incorporates unusual sources dealing with broader social context and infers specifics from a general study of period interactions. It is this latter approach that historian Robert Finlay disagrees with. He claims that Davis does not appropriately rely on the source material provided by the Coras narrative and thus gives an unnecessarily dramatic version of events. The AHR forum on the subject includes both Finlay’s review and Davis’s response, providing a model of scholarly debate that extends beyond the actual content of the book in question. In addition to being a rhetorical critique, Finlay is attacking the foundational methodology of modern social history that Davis is then compelled to defend.

The Slopes Of War, by N.A Perez is a historical fiction book. There were lots of people who got damaged emotionally and physically in war, the slopes of war shows examples of how they got hurt.

Her writing of the book postdates the movie of Martin Guerre, Le Retour de Martin Guerre, which Davis herself was involved in with the screenplay . Davis was not thrilled about the interpretation of the movie because it strayed from the actual events of the court case . As a result, Davis wrote The Return of Martin Guerre using her own interpretations based on the archival evidence she collected. Davis’ ultimate goal was to ensure that her book was easily accessible to all audiences and therefore, she catered to different groups of people through her choice of detail, literary voice, and metaphor as by topical analysis . By writing about how people lived during the 16th century, French society, readers are more understanding of why people did what they did; specifically in regards to the Martin Guerre court

Two short novels “The Wife of Martin Guerre” by Janet Lewis and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Conner have very different plots, however, many connections can be made between certain characters. A strong example of this would be Arnaud (posing as Martin), and Manley, two antagonists from each of the novels listed above, respectively. In Janet Lewis’ short novel “The Wife of Martin Guerre” the main character Bertrande is taken on an emotional roller coaster as her husband Martin doesn’t return from a trip he promised would only be a week. Just as she is learning to embrace being the head of the household and a single mother, a man claiming to be the Martin who left her eight long years ago appears out of the blue, throwing her life and emotions into complete chaos. In Flannery O’Conners short story “Good Country People” a woman named Hulga, who is unpleasant to the majority of people, is seduced by a young man, claiming to be nothing more than a simple country boy selling bibles. Later in these short stories, it is revealed that both of these men are not who they claim to be, and their lies caused rather dreadful repercussions. These two antagonists delude Hulga and Bertrande in their respective stories by enticing them with desirable amounts of knowledge and causing them to lose perception of reality by using manipulation throughout the entire plot.

The key passage for critics explicitly states Davis’ beliefs of Bertrande as an accomplice, “But the obstinate and honorable Bertrande does not seem a woman so easily fooled, not even by a charmer like Pansette. By the time she had received him in her bed, she must have realized the difference; as any wife of Artigat would have agreed, there is no mistaking ‘the touch of the man on the woman.’ Either by explicit or tacit agreement, she helped him become her husband” (Davis, 44). The main argument is that Davis’ assumptions fail to take into account the ages of Bertrande and Martin during their marriage, as well as Bertrande’s long abstinence as a possible reason for her memory failure. Yet, Davis’ arguments are far from imaginative, in fact, they are derived from the the thoughts of the French peasantry, including those of Judge Coras himself, “She had shared her bed with the prisoner for more than three years, ‘during which long interval it is not likely that the said de Rols would not have recognized him for a stranger…”

The only thing that Arnaud and Martin really had in common was that neither was happy or had become very bored with their lives they were born into to remain where they were. The question in hand is, how could Arnaud successfully trade his identity for the identity of Martin Guerre?

Arnaud gave Bertrande a way out of the terrible spot she was in, and Bertrande gave Arnaud a much better life. This agreement made equal amount of sense for both individuals as it allowed both of them to gain a significant amount of self-gain. The biggest thing disregarded Finlay’s claim for me was that he used this quote from The Return of Martin Guerre in his argument, saying, “It is clear that…(pseudo-Martin) was moving beyond the mask of the carnival player and the stratagems of the mere inheritance seeker to forge a new identity and a new life for himself” (41). This shows us that Arnaud was accepting a new life as a complete stranger; this is not an everyday occurrence for a person to give up their entire life for another’s. It requires a certain state of behavior, personality, and mental problems to be someone else

In the film The Count of Monte Cristo, based on the novel of the same name by Alexander Dumas, the idea of family serves as serious matter that is capable of dictating the allegiances and motivations for the primary characters of the film. Furthermore, the idea of family is also depicted in the film, as a liability for the characters and a vulnerability that others in the film exploit. Within this examples can be seen in Villefort’s action of imprisoning Edmond to protect his father, Albert’s change of heart when it is revealed that Edmond is his father, and the class discrimination that Edmond encounters prior to his imprisonment.