A Historian for All Seasons Natalie Zemon Davis (1928-2023)¹

ABSTRACT

This article contends that Natalie Zemon Davis (1928–2023) was instrumental in shaping early modern historiography over the past fifty years. She redefined how historians approach the relationship between culture and society and contributed to legitimizing the role of imagination in historical writing. By tracing her journey as both a scholar and an activist—highlighted by rigorous empirical research, dedicated teaching, and her pioneering role in introducing gender studies to North American academia—the article demonstrates how these elements influenced the subjects she chose to explore. Davis’ defining trait was her curiosity, which led her to draw from a broad array of theoretical approaches while maintaining her grounding as a historian. Her body of work, both diverse and unorthodox, is distinguished by its coherence and originality, inviting the attentive reading we reserve for the classics.

KEYWORDS
historical imagination; cultural studies; activism

RESUMO

O artigo sustenta que Natalie Zemon Davis (1939-2023) desempenhou um papel crucial na historiografia modernista dos últimos cinquenta anos, renovando a abordagem das relações entre cultura e sociedade, e legitimando o recurso à imaginação na narrativa histórica. Por meio do exame da trajetória da historiadora como profissional e militante, marcada pela pesquisa empírica exaustiva, docência generosa e a introdução dos estudos de gênero no meio universitário norte-americano, sugere o quanto tais aspectos influíram na temática que escolheu. A curiosidade foi uma de suas marcas, levando-a a se interessar por diversas correntes teóricas, sem, contudo, perder a identidade de historiadora. Deixou uma obra variada e heterodoxa, marcada pela coerência e originalidade, o que impõe que se dê à sua produção o cuidado devido aos clássicos.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE
imaginação histórica; história cultural; militância

Je veux faire mes sauts de spéculation à partir d’un tremplin de données

Natalie Zemon Davis, L’histoire tout feu tout flamme (In: Crouzet, 2004).

1. WHY NATALIE ZEMON DAVIS?

Upon finishing The Red and the Black for the first time, I remarked to a friend, a distinguished literary critic, that I was astonished I had lived so long without encountering such a masterpiece. After commenting on Stendhal, he stated that “The challenge with him is that we constantly feel how much more intelligent he is than we are.”

Natalie Zemon Davis evokes a similar feeling in me: she consistently seems more insightful than I am. Occasionally, I find myself intrigued, pondering the direction of her detailed descriptions, influenced by the work of American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, with digressions, musings, and even inventions that are not always easily discernible. However, she invariably succeeds, ultimately resolving every loose end within the scholarly terrain she has explored, page after page. This sentiment resonates with generations of historians, like myself, dedicated to research and teaching Early Modern History: “She wasn’t just ahead of her time in her own scholarship, she was always steps ahead of you in your own research,” observed Paul Cohen in the heartfelt obituary he wrote on the occasion of her passing for the University of Toronto’s website, where he is a professor and where she also worked on several occasions (Cohen, 2023, p. 10).

I always saw her as a woman historian, and a woman before a historian, which for us, women historians – and for me, belonging to a generation in which being a woman was even more difficult than it is today – felt like a source of comfort. Meticulous, detail-oriented, precise, and careful in the balanced construction of the text, she does not hide her literary talent, while the theoretical and methodological framework, carefully chosen, remains confined to the notes. These are almost always extensive, practically another text, another book, filled with clues and possibilities.

I became aware of her work through articles published in the journal Past & Present, which have been extensively cited. Due to their influence on my scholarly development, I wish to highlight two: “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-century France” from 1971, and “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France” from 1973, both included in her debut book, Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays, published in 1975. In Brazil, the work was titled Culturas do Povo [Cultures of the People] and translated by anthropologist Mariza Correia only in 1990. By that time, I already had the French translation by historian Marie-Noële Bourguet. It does not seem accidental to me that two prominent intellectuals, in Brazil and France translated Natalie Zemon Davis in their country: she was becoming a leading figure in the field of the humanities, moving creatively across different disciplines. Newly awarded my doctorate and recently qualified to teach in graduate programs, I avidly read the essays in Society and Culture in Early Modern France, discussing them with equally enthusiastic students. I wondered what she might be like, looking at the photograph on the inside flap of the Brazilian edition, and together with the late Edgard De Decca, from Unicamp, came the idea of bringing her to Brazil, with both of us working with Sao Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp) to carry out such a project within our universities.

We began to correspond. After the first formal exchanges, I was surprised by her warmth and by the fact that gender affinities set aside merely academic matters. We exchanged details about our families, number of children, and tastes. We had already chosen the dates for her trip to Brazil when she informed me that family matters prevented her from traveling. We agreed she would visit later, once the situation had calmed down.

Shortly afterwards, in the first semester of 1990, with a trip planned for a colloquium in New York, I proposed meeting her in Princeton, where she taught. By then, she had read my book on witchcraft and popular religiosity, which I sent after she expressed interest in its subject and mentioned that her father-in-law, Horace Bancroft Davis – who had taught for a short time at the Free School of Sociology and Politics of Sao Paulo – could translate the table of contents and a passage or two for her, to satisfy a bit of her curiosity. Furthermore, since the whole family had accompanied Horace Davis to Brazil, Chandler Davis, Natalie’s husband and a distinguished mathematician, retained some familiarity with the language he had picked up as a boy.. Three days before my departure, a complication with my early-stage third pregnancy arose, which I informed her about. Her kind response advised me to prioritize my child’s wellbeing and set aside other matters.² We continued our correspondence, and on one occasion, she called to discuss a matter of her personal interest.

Throughout this time, I cherished the desire to meet her in person. She passed away on October 21, 2023. Although we never met, my affection and gratitude grow with each reading. A remarkable historian, a fulfilled and radiant woman, and a professor remembered by her students as the best they ever had, she was also an activist for social and gender causes. Like her husband and closest friend, she was a victim of McCarthyist persecution, which swept across the United States during one of the darkest periods in its history. Unfortunately, in our current times, this is not just a sad memory.

I believe that the personal tone with which I begin would have pleased this woman and historian, who was so unique, so unconventional, and so full of energy, as documented by all those who interviewed or wrote about her, praising her generosity and hope for a better world. I reflected on the impact she had on me and my generation, because, to my dismay, I discovered in my final years of teaching that she is little known in Brazil today. I therefore appeal for her work, admired worldwide, to be revisited and not allowed to fall into oblivion, as has happened to many other brilliant and innovative authors who have been relegated by fads that are often dubious or unfair.

Natalie Zemon Davis holds an important place in my personal pantheon, where she continues to pontificate and break new ground. This could be a matter of taste, affinity, or temperament. Therefore, I will now begin to justify why, regardless of my personal appreciation, she should continue to be read as all the great classics are.

2. WHO WAS NATALIE ZEMON DAVIS?

In Brazil, within the circles I frequented, she was always referred to as Natalie Davis. After hearing testimonials and many of the interviews she gave, I realized that she insisted on using her birth surname, Zemon, and I believe I understand why. She was born into the third generation of Jewish families from Central Europe and grew up during a time when anti-Semitism and Nazism were becoming increasingly ominous. At a certain point, she wanted to know who her relatives were, from which region of Europe they had come, and whether some of them had been among the victims of the Shoah. Her parents reacted by asking, “Why do you want to know these things? That is not important. We are American Jews.” While some of her relatives were peddlers and others were liberal professionals, all of them, it seems, turned to commerce, achieving success and living in comfort and wealth, though there was not a single millionaire among them, as she stated with a certain pride in a testimony. Her adolescence was marked by insecurity, and even before the United States entered the war, there was significant fear that anti-Jewish persecution might spread across the Atlantic. Born and raised in Detroit, in a secular family but with a mother who zealously upheld Jewish traditions, she studied at an elite college attended by wealthy families in the region, where she was one of the very few Jewish students. There she became a communist and activist, and through her activism, she met her WASP husband (that is, belonging to the group of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant families who arrived early in colonization) secretly marrying him at age 19, six weeks after they first met. Her mother was distraught over the union and only sought her out again when the couple’s first child was born about five years later. Natalie Zemon Davis remained with her chosen partner for 74 years, passing away the year after her husband, at the age of 94. During her life, she never abandoned the surname brought by Jewish immigrants.

While I will not dwell on her personal life, it is worth noting it could be the plot of a novel. The couple, already with three young children, endured over a decade under the oppressive conditions of McCarthyism. Summoned in 1953 to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee, Chandler Davis refused to answer their questions and appealed to the US Supreme Court. During the ensuing years leading up to his 1959 conviction, this brilliant and renowned mathematician lost his professorship at the University of Michigan and saw all American university doors close to him. He sought work through newspapers and advertising agencies, and found success writing detective novels. It was impossible to seek employment abroad because Chandler’s and Natalie’s passports were confiscated for ten years. In January 1960, he served his sentence, spending six months in prison, while Natalie balanced an uncertain academic career with caring for three small children. In 1962, Chandler Davis finally received an invitation to teach at the University of Toronto, where they settled with their family and remained until his death in 2022. He is now considered a hero of the anti-McCarthyist resistance and an icon of the American left (Batterson, 2003).

While her children were growing up, Natalie Zemon Davis adapted as best she could to a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. Turning her attention to the history of 16th-century France, she enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Michigan, where her husband had found employment. Before the anti-communist persecution intensified – which eventually led to Chandler Davis’ imprisonment –, she managed to begin research on the workers and printers of Lyon. She traveled to France and fell in love with the city and the country. After defending her doctorate in 1959 (Wolf, 2011, pp. 188-202), she attended seminars and colloquiums, published articles, and reoriented her interests in light of the travel restrictions due to the seizure of passports during that decade. While her research in France relied on handwritten documents in archives, she then turned her focus to significant collections of printed documents on French history held in public and university libraries in the United States.

Her teaching career began uncertainly, starting with temporary positions at the Universities of Toronto, Brown, and Berkeley, without any permanent jobs. At Berkeley, she finally secured her first permanent position, remaining there from 1971 to 1978. In Toronto, she pioneered a course on women’s and gender history, together with Australian historian Jill Ker Conway.³ From that period date some of her most luminous essays, through which she developed the transition from an analysis grounded in classical social history to hallmark: the study of the intricate relationship between society, culture, politics, and religion, moving, depending on the needs of the chosen subject, between History, Anthropology, and Literature. In 1975, she became known for her collection of essays, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, which, as it turned out, took fifteen years to be translated into Portuguese as Culturas do Povo (Davis, 1975, 1979, 1990). In 1978, she moved to Princeton University and held the Henry Charles Lea Chair until her retirement in 1996. There, she actively participated in the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, alongside leading figures in the humanities, such as anthropologist Clifford Geertz and historians Lawrence Stone, Carlo Ginzburg, and Robert Darnton.⁴ From 1996 onwards, she worked at the University of Toronto as an assistant professor of History and Anthropology and as a professor of medieval studies.

The memories of colleagues and former students highlight the importance of Natalie Zemon Davis in both in terms of her work and teaching, inspiring students and colleagues alike with her enthusiasm, erudition, and originality. On the occasion when Princeton University celebrated the 90th birthday of the historian, then still actively teaching, Anthony Grafton, one of her most celebrated former students and later a colleague at Princeton, recalled the countless times her exclamation “Thats’ so interesting!” echoed through the room, teaching “that curiosity and patience are the greatest epistemic virtues a historian can have”. In class, he recalls, instead of reading prosaic texts line by line, she would say:

Where others read prosaic texts—very prosaic texts—line by line, she spoke. Where others concentrated on the maneuvers of courtly elites, she took us down into the streets and squares where killing took place. And where others described the massacre as a contingent catastrophe, perhaps the product of miscalculations, she examined the ways in which inflicting violence could seem to be a way of living one’s religion. I don’t know how the Good and the Great in the room felt. But the graduate students stopped breathing and forgot to blink. By recreating “The Rites of Violence,” Natalie Davis had changed our lives: had given us a blazing new idea of what a historian could be and ought to be (Grafton, 2019, pp. 1-2).

Celebrations and tributes are often lavish in their praise, highlighting the qualities and contributions of those being honored. What is striking in the case of the celebrations surrounding Natalie Zemon Davis, particularly following her passing, is the convergence of judgments, opinions, and emotions that permeate the testimonials. These references to her profound human qualities accompany the emphasis on her intellectual and scientific contributions. She was always available to her younger colleagues, guiding them and offering mentorship in a university environment that was still largely closed to women’s participation, and drawing on her long experience as a feminist activist, which she pursued in her own distinctive way. References to her pioneering work in the North American academic environment appear in all the speeches honoring her during various awards ceremonies throughout her life. These awards, which she received numerous times, include the Aby Warburg Prize for Humanities from the city of Hamburg in 2000, the Holberg Prize from the Norwegian Parliament in 2010, and the National Humanities Medal presented by President Obama in 2013. Perhaps, nothing is more eloquent of her role at the forefront of the journey toward gender equality than the photograph of the History Department faculty at Brown University in 1960. A year after receiving her doctorate, her teaching contract was still provisional. The image shows a group of thirteen men, with a young woman standing among them. Small, fragile, smiling, and certainly fearless, as she would be throughout her life.

Recognized as a leading figure in the historiography of her time, Natalie Zemon Davis was also a generous and compassionate citizen, a humanist in the fullest sense.. Reading the interviews she gave and what was written about her upon her passing, I was reminded of the famous reference made by Erasmus of Rotterdamto his friend Thomas More in a letter to the Franconian humanist Ulrich von Hutten: “a man for all seasons, born and designed for friendship, of which he is the most sincere and steadfast devotee” (Ropper, 1986, p. 54). Similarly, Natalie Zemon Davis was a woman for all seasons, which adds to the profound sense of loss following her death. Historians Joan W. Scott and Francesca Trivellato observed that her disciples and former students harbored the sentiment that she might live forever, as if she embodied an immortal spirit.⁵ Paul Cohen, who attended her courses at Brown University and was her last doctoral student, penned a beautiful obituary wherein he echoed the belief that she seemed destined for immortality:

For those who knew her, it was hard in recent years not to nurse a kind of secret, impossible hope that, perhaps, her energy, her smile, her ideas, her writing might all carry on just a little bit longer. That we might experience once again the social miracle that took place in each conversation she facilitated. That perhaps she might live on forever. I will confess that each time I said goodbye to her, I dreamed that the Thélème-on-Toronto’s-Euclid-Avenue might continue on eternally (Cohen, 2023, p. 10).

3. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF NATALIE ZEMON DAVIS

3.1. Methodological unity and thematic variety

In the comprehensive interview conducted by Denis Crouzet in 2004, published as Natalie Zemon Davis – l’histoire tout feu tout flamme [A Passion for History] (which could be translated as A Fiery History, or A History Full of Passion), essential for understanding the historian’s trajectory, there are several passages that reveal the visceral and passionate relationship she maintained with History throughout her life. Facts, names, and events fascinated her from an early age, and unlike many of her colleagues, she never found tedious. She was particularly attentive to their unexpected and chance nature. Later, when confronted with historical sources, she regarded them as a magical thread connecting her to people long dead, in situations that time had dissolved, yet never preventing her from reflecting on and dialoguing with them, often inspired by her imagination (Crouzet, 2004, pp. 38-39; pp. 7-8).

Passion, speculation, and imagination defined her restless personality, and, according to her own words, she would “sometimes refuse to rest.” Subjects rarely held her attention for long; once her curiosity was satisfied, she would be drawn to new topics. While she admired historians who could dedicate themselves to a single subject, Zemon Davis considered this approach incompatible with her own style, as she preferred to “choose and address one subject, then move on to another” (Crouzet, 2004, p. 17).

Despite her various interests, Zemon Davis maintained a consistent theoretical and methodological approach across her work, aligned with major historiographical debates from the latter half of the 20th century into the early 21st century. Rejecting dogmatism and categorical statements, she embraced complexity, seeming convinced that knowledge is subject to corrections and adjustments, and that the past always retained a degree of unintelligibility, in the eyes of those separated from it by a more or less thick span of time.

Paul Cohen noted that Natalie Zemon Davis drew on elements from a wide array of methodologies, seeking perspectives that would allow her to analyze the complex historical realities that surpassed the capacity of a single theoretical system (Cohen, 2023, p. 2). Regarding the intersection between History and Anthropology, prominently featured in her works, Zemon Davis clarified her methodological approach in 1983. She distinguished historians from anthropologists, emphasizing how historians made eclectic choices, finding this unproblematic. She stated that historians’ use of anthropological writings was “not for prescriptions, but for suggestions; not for universal rules of human behavior, but for relevant comparisons” (Davis, 1983, p. 273). In 2000, Zemon Davis provided deeper insights into the transdisciplinary use of concepts in The Gift in Sixteenth Century France, still to be translated into Portuguese (Davis, 2000). As indicated by the title, the book examined a core theme of classical anthropological theory from a historical perspective, drawing chiefly on Marcel Mauss and, to a lesser extent, Marshall Sahlins (Mauss, 1923-1924, 1980; Sahlins, 1972). Engaging in critical dialogue with Anthropology, she argued for the flexibility of the gift system, contrasting with anthropologists’ focus on invariants, and demonstrated how much context and society influenced this system’s diversity. The adoption of methods and procedures from other disciplines never overshadowed her deep commitment to comprehensive historical evidence, as “there is no substitute for extensive work in the historical sources” (Davis, 1983, p. 273).

I think this methodological heterodoxy was experimental in nature, akin to Natalie Zemon Davis’ historical writing style. At the beginning of her career, she excelled in writing articles that seamlessly combined empirical research with theoretical analysis; over the years, however, she preferred to write books, in which, in my view, she achieved historiographical maturity.

This viewpoint, however, is not shared by Paul Cohen, who offers one of the most thorough analyses of his former mentor’s intellectual profile. He asserts that Natalie Zemon Davis reached her pinnacle as a historian through her academic articles: they were true gems, in which she refined her subjects from raw material drawn from archival sources, “with a clarity that transformed the unlikely and the improbable into self-evident themes for historical investigation,” raising questions “with laser-like precision” and with “arguments grounded in dazzling erudition worn always lightly” that unveiled new horizons of historical understanding through “prose sparkling, punctuated by moments of bright humor, and marked always by the real empathy she always displayed for her subjects.” These qualities positioned her as crucial in defining cultural history as a field, placing it “at the forefront of historical scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s” (Cohen, 2023, pp. 2-3).

Following a series of articles that marked the early career of Natalie Zemon Davis, her scholarly focus shifted towards writing monographs that were nearly always concise, rarely exceeding two hundred pages. This stands in contrast to the voluminous works of many of her contemporaries, such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou or Keith Thomas’ Religion and the Decline of Magic. In my assessment, Zemon Davis’ most remarkable contributions are her concise, elegantly composed, and meticulously documented works that are abundant in historical imagination.

As a young left-wing feminist, Natalie Zemon Davis emerged as a forerunner in the study of women, initially testing her analyses in articles before devoting an entire volume to three figures from diverse cultural backgrounds, in an exercise of connected history avant la lettre. Her interest in gender studies became prominent in the 1970s, beginning with teaching roles in 1971 and shortly followed by articles such as “Women on Top”, featured in the 1975 collection Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Zemon Davis gained international recognition as an expert on the subject when, along with Arlette Farge, she coordinated the third volume of Histoire des Femmes, edited by Michelle Perrot and Georges Duby, published in 1990. Two years later, she revisited the analysis of women’s agency in a bold and demystifying piece: “Women and the World of the Annales’, which was recently translated into French. In this work, Davis examined the roles of women who, until then, had remained obscure yet played decisive roles in the renowned French journal, a major player in twentieth-century historiographical innovation. These women, often lovers or wives, were integral to much of the research or reflections of their prominent partners, such as Lucien Febvre—as exemplified by Lucie Varga, now acknowledged as a talented and original historian—and Marc Bloch, whose wife, Simone Bloch, was a continuous collaborator until his execution by the Nazis (Davis, 1992, pp. 121-137). In 1995, Zemon Davis’ feminist engagement and sustained interest in marginalized groups converged in Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives, a book credited by the author as a pivotal point in her career. In it, she profiled three very different women who, having lived in the 17th century and belonged to different environments and religions, shared the common goal of paving the way in a world dominated by men: the German Protestant Glikl bas Judah Leib, the French Catholic Marie de l’Incarnation, and the German-Dutch Maria Sybila Merian. Faced with various misfortunes and setbacks, they strove to radically change their lives and environments, building new destinies without, however, managing to overcome the obstacles that, in a world dominated by men, condemned them to remain forever on the margins (Davis, 2005). Throughout her life, Natalie Zemon Davis repeatedly returned to the theme of women’s history, exploring it from a deeply personal perspective and consistently including gender comparisons, as seen in “Men, Women, and Violence: Some Reflections on Equality”, an article in which she critiques the stereotypical depiction of “aggressive males versus non-violent women” (Davis, 1977). Her feminism, therefore, was one that rejected oversimplified generalizations and standard claims found in more programmatic strands, aligning instead with the nuanced feminism characteristic of certain French perspectives (Davis; Farge, 2002).

3.2. Conjecturing, imagining, narrating.

During a period when narrative history was experiencing a resurgence, Natalie Zemon Davis emerged as a prominent figure who adapted this approach to contemporary needs. She employed methods that mirrored the diversity of the characters she studied, considering the conclusions drawn by her as a historian. This approach is evident in her essay “Proverbial Wisdom and Popular Errors” and the Prologue to Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. In the former, she imagined a dialogue with one of the scholars she studied, criticizing him for overlooking the village midwives, who held significant local knowledge. Her opponent in this imagined scenario, a doctor, defended his inclusion of these women in dissections at Montpellier, accusing Natalie Zemon Davis of naivety. In the latter, she gave voice to three female characters who expressed dissatisfaction with her portrayal of them, arguing that she ignored their religious and cultural differences, thereby misrepresenting their purposes. The historian defended herself, imagined the characters’ hesitation, and pleaded, “Give me another chance. Read it again” (Davis, 1990, p. 217; Davis, 2005, pp. 11-14).

Zemon Davis was often averse to definitive statements, preferring to leave interpretations open. She carefully selected verbs to convey uncertainties and doubts to the reader, using expressions such as “I am inclined to think that...” and “it may be that...” While partially a matter of personal temperament, this choice also reflected an affinity with Michel de Montaigne’s thinking—a major influence on her work and a significant figure from the sixteenth-century France she studied extensively. Montaigne, in their essay On The Lame, criticized arguments based solely on authority:

They make me detest plausible things when they are presented as infallible. I like these words, which soften and moderate the rashness of our assertions: “perhaps,” “in a way,” “some,” “they say,” “I think,” and others like them (Montaigne, v. III, 2009, p. 369, our translation).

As she scrutinized individuals’ ideas, feelings, conflicts, and intimate dreams, Natalie Zemon Davis admitted that she often encountered problems in the empirical basis of her research, preferring instead to “proceed hypothetically-deductively” rather than give up in the face of a lack of evidence (used here in the sense attributed to it by Carlo Ginzburg) (Crouzet, 2004, p. 14; Ginzburg, 2002, 2007). For this reason, she made use of cross-sectional evidence (my expression) that occurred in the same context as the events for which she had found no proof, resorting, if necessary, to imagination, an important aid to the historian, provided it is properly validated.

Similar procedures were already found in the articles collected in Society and Culture in Early Modern France, but it was in The Return of Martin Guerre, her first monograph, that they gained greater density, as can be seen in the following passage: “The marriage contract between Bertrande and Martin has not survived, but we can imagine its content from many others that have survived” (Davis, 1983, p. 34).

Or this other one:

What of Bertrande de Rols? Did she know that the new Martin was not the man who had abandoned her eight years before? Perhaps not at the very first, when he arrived with all his “signs” and proofs. 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” (Davis, 1983, pp. 61-690, our emphasis).

The fifth essay of the book, from which I took the second quote, is a good example of Natalie Zemon Davis’ use of what she conceived as imagination, and not by chance, she titled it “The Invented Marriage” (Davis, 1983, pp. 61-69). It is also one of the moments in which she best uses the concept of self-fashioning, borrowed from the American historian Stephen Greenblatt, but formulated before him by Montaigne, who defined façonnement de soi in his Essays. (Greenblatt, 2005; Montaigne, 2000, p. II495-502). Together, Bertrande du Rols and the false Martin Guerre made what was false true: “Among other things, so one must surmise, they decided to make the invented marriage last” (Davis, 1983, 75). Imagination, self-modeling, truth, and lies could, however, become mixed up, as the author would suggest later, when discussing, in chapter 9, the return home of the real character: “Where does self-fashioning stop and lying begin? Long before Montaigne posed that question to his readers in a self- accusatory essay, Pansette’s inventiveness posed it to his judges” (Davis, 1983, 126).

At that point, the guiding principles that would shape the author’s concerns and her narrative style in nearly all her subsequent writings were already outlined. The work can be interpreted in at least two ways: one by a broad, moderately educated audience interested in History, and the other by specialists, professional historians. I realized that my initial reading, when I was young, was like the former, captivated by the detective narrative. Now, with more experienced eyes, I approach it like the latter, recognizing the sophisticated craftsmanship underlying the narrative. The multiple layers in the writing raise fundamental questions for historians: how to manage the lack of empirical evidence, how to turn the silences in sources into strengths that fuel historical imagination, and how to appreciate the narrative while distinguishing it from fiction.

The Return of Martin Guerre was a film before it was a book, and Natalie Zemon Davis found that observing the actors shape their roles was essential for better understanding the gaps in documentation and more accurately crafting her narrative choices. The publication was a resounding success, translated into several languages, but it received harsh criticism from American historian Robert Finlay. From a very conservative perspective, diametrically opposed to Zemon Davis’, he accused her of falsifying and distorting evidence, attacking her from two opposite angles. On one hand, he felt the book contained statements without documentary basis and that Zemon Davis filled these gaps with speculative assertions. On the other hand, he believed she placed undue trust in problematic documents, such as the legal proceedings against the false Martin Guerre, without recognizing intermediaries between the events themselves and those recorded in legal texts. Natalie Zemon Davis responded eloquently, and in my view, dismantled Finlay’s arguments in a text exceeding twenty pages, titled “On the Lame”, referencing both Montaigne’s famous essay and the real Martin Guerre, who returned home after eight years, lame due to a leg amputation in the battle of Saint-Quentin (Davis, 1988b, pp. 572-603; Finlay, 1988, pp. 553-571). Nevertheless, it was Carlo Ginzburg who, in my opinion, resolved the controversy with his afterword for the Italian translation in 1984, a year after the book’s publication in the United States (Ginzburg, 1984, pp. 129-154; Ginzburg, 2007, pp. 311-338).

Ginzburg draws on a vast repertoire to identify the intellectual tradition to which Natalie Zemon Davis belongs. He noted that, in explaining her method of cross-sectional empirical reasoning (once again, I am the one who coined this expression), the author concluded the book’s preface provocatively: “What I offer you here is in part my invention, but held tightly in check by the voices of the past” (Davis, 1983, p. 21). Ginzburg considers that despite the intention to provoke, the term “invention” carries a “deviant” tone. According to him, both Zemon Davis’ research and narrative do not contrast “true” with “invented”; rather, they meticulously integrate “realities” and “possibilities.” As a result, she often employed expressions akin to those mentioned earlier—“perhaps,” “should,” “may be”—highlighting the divergence between the perspectives of the judge and the historian. For the former, the margin of uncertainty had a “purely negative” connotation, potentially leading to an “acquittal due to lack of evidence.” For the latter, it initiated “a deepening of the investigation,” connecting the case to its context, “understood here as a place of historically determined possibilities,” allowing the characters” biographies to represent “other men and women of the same time and place” (as these words are borrowed from the historian). This outcome was achievable through the astute and patient reconstruction of “notarial, judicial, and literary sources.” Thus, “true” and “plausible,” “evidence” and “possibilities,” would intermingle “while remaining strictly distinct” (Ginzburg, 1984, pp. 315-316).

Martin Guerre’s writing, filled with doubts and resistant to definitive statements, was inspired by Montaigne’s Essays but also served as a means to resolve the challenges posed by her choice to study a certain type of protagonist—a choice she never abandoned. In various interviews, she reflected on why, throughout her life, she remained devoted to the less fortunate, beginning with her thesis on the typographers of Lyon and the menu peuple, or common people. She speculated that perhaps her Jewish heritage, as a descendant of Central European immigrants who arrived in America yet continued to feel marginalized, contributed to this decision. It might also have been influenced by her political activism, Marxist readings, and sociological studies, a discipline she encountered in his youth that focused on the impoverished (Crouzet, 2004, p. 61). Confronted with the difficulty of placing ordinary people in history—since they left few, if any, traces—she employed her imagination while being careful of the risks inherent in blindly championing poor protagonists. She believed that “the historian must always consider the possibility of being both close and distant” (Loyer, 2007). She could have chosen to write about great figures, such as queens or kings, but preferred not to: “I’ve never felt that I was truly a historian for them. They’ve had and have their own historians. It’s the others who need me,” she stated (Crouzet, 2004, p. 53).

If Natalie Zemon Davis’ early historiography focused on collective phenomena with social groups as protagonists—workers, rituals of violence, rebellious women asserting control over their destinies, and murderers seeking royal pardons—gradually, starting with Martin Guerre, her focus shifted to more restricted experiences of liminality. In works like Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives, she examines three women and later culminates with analyses of two individual profiles of marginalized people at the end of her life.

The first of these was Hassan Al-Wazzân, a character featured in Trickster Travels, a book published in English in 2006 and not yet available in Brazilian Portuguese (Davis, 2014). He was a Muslim born in Granada to a family that had sought refuge there due to internal strife in their homeland, Fez, in what is now northeastern Morocco. In 1492, the homogenizing policies of the Catholic Monarchs destroyed the last Mozarabic kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula and forced his family into exile back to North Africa. There, Hassan Al-Wazzân gained prominence and performed diplomatic duties, traveling along both shores of the Mediterranean. After being captured by Arab pirates during his return trip from Egypt to Fez, he was sold to Pope Leo X. This led to his settlement in Rome, conversion to Christianity, and work with the papal curia until he eventually returned to North Africa, reverted to Islam, and vanished from historical records.

One distinctive aspect of this narrative is the stratagem Natalie Zemon Davis utilized, previously outlined in Martin Guerre: as the episodes unfold and the character’s identity evolves, she varies his name. In the earlier work, the impostor was sometimes called “the new Martin Guerre” and other times Pansette, a nickname used before joining Bertrande de Rols. In Trickster Travels, she employs a similar technique: as a Muslim, he is Al-Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzân al-Fasi or simply Hassan al-Wazzam;⁶once converted, he adopts the name Giovanni Leone in honor of his papal patron, Pope Leo X (born Giovanni de’ Medici), or Yuhanna Al Assad, an Arabic translation of his Christian name, John. When recounting his return to Islam, she reverts to his original Arabic name, Hassan al-Wazzân. This approach requires significant effort from readers, who may initially feel confused until they realize they are engaging with a narrative of shifting identities—a device accepted in literary fiction but unusual in historical narrative. Nonetheless, the main objective is not to resemble literature but to strive for fidelity to the historical context and to those whose voices it seeks to amplify.

This technique of altering names was refined by Natalie Zemon Davis in her last publication, two years before her death. In Listening to the Languages of the People, a biography diverging from her usual 16th and 17th-century focus, Zemon Davis explores the life of a Romanian linguist born in 1859 and deceased in 1934, whose life unfolded amidst the declining Ottoman Empire and the onset of World War I. This work examines Lazaire Sainéan, a multilingual individual torn between Judaism and Christianity, who was forced to leave Romania and emigrate to France, which became a second cultural homeland for him. Known for his erudition and admired by Romanian, German, and French intellectuals, he fell victim to fierce anti-Semitic persecution in Romania’s early monarchy. Despite his erudition, he did not receive the recognition he deserved among French academics during the Dreyfus affair.

Lazaire Sainéan exemplifies self-fashioning, a theme dear to Natalie Zemon Davis. In the opening lines of the introduction to Listening to the Languages of the People, Zemon Davis introduces the subject by examining his onomastic oscillation.

He had been Lazăr Şăin in his earliest articles in Jewish periodicals in Bucharest, and then in 1883 became Lazăr Şăineanu in his many philological and linguistic publications, until he became Lazare Sainéan as an émigré from Romania to Paris in 1901. As such, Şăin/Şăineanu/Sainéan was a fascinating addition to my study of figures who cross cultural and geographical boundaries and of the entanglements, difficulties, and creativities which ensue for them (Davis, 2022, p. 1).

Lazaire Sainéan’s adoption of multiple names was not merely a matter of nomenclature; it reflected, I think, the breadth of his intellectual pursuits. He initially engaged in academic studies of philology and linguistics, disciplines gaining importance at the time. Sainéan also possessed an immense curiosity about popular cultures, particularly focusing on the folkloric and idiomatic expressions prevalent in the region of his birth. This interest led him to study Yiddish, a language his mother spoke fluently. His commitment to extending beyond academic boundaries and exploring how scholarly knowledge related to vernacular speech brought him recognition among European specialists, especially German and French, and attracted attention from Natalie Zemon Davis, who shared his focus on historically marginalized voices. After specializing in Yiddish, Șăin/Șăineanu/Sainéan believed that recognition from intellectual circles in France would require him to concentrate on a prominent figure of French literature. He chose François Rabelais, a pivotal figure in modern French literature, yet he was still regarded as an outsider and, despite his conversion, faced discrimination as a Jew. His relentless struggle did not lead to the reconstruction of the identity he desperately sought. He was unable to secure citizenship in Romania, which was itself defining its national identity, or in France, amidst increasing nationalism that eventually led to the Great War. Lazaire Sainéan perhaps epitomizes the marginal figures studied by this historian of the marginalized, and his significance is underscored by being the last subject of her focus.

Natalie Zemon Davis’ interest in self-representation and fluctuating identities led her to employ literary theory and narrative techniques, crafting a style that sometimes verges on fiction without detracting from its historiographical integrity.⁷ Emphasizing ambiguity and the range of possibilities that often remain open in historical research, she drew on imagination. Permitted to the novelist but regarded with suspicion when employed by the historian, she used it to navigate incomplete empirical data and to mobilize inferences based on facts and cross-cutting information found in the documentation concerning contemporaries and people connected to her subject, as can be seem in the following excerpt from her biography of Leo Africanus.

Al-Wazzân (the Arabic name for Leo) then decided to observe the transformation of Egypt in person and set sail for Cairo. It is possible that he did not arrive in time to witness the massacre of the inhabitants and Mamluks, which began on January 31, 1517 [...]. But he witnessed the looting of the treasures of popular shrines, such as the tomb of Saint Nafisa, and the ransacking of many private homes [...]. He must have been aware of the summary arrest and execution of Mamluk officials. In the mosques, he must have heard the women wailing from the windows as Selim paraded through the city. He must have noticed that the marble was being removed from the palaces and the citadel so that Selim could take it to Istanbul and use it to build a madrasa identical to that of Qânsûh, which al-Wazzân had so admired on his first visit. He must have known that many important figures [...] would be deported to Istanbul. [...] The diplomat from Fez (i.e., Leão) seems to have viewed these events with mixed feelings (Davis, 2014, pp. 58-59) (our emphasis, our translation).

Utilizing imagination to navigate the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent in facts and events can lead to a deeper understanding, highlighting the nuances and distinctions between verisimilitude and truth, thereby becoming integral to the strategy of historical narrative. In this context, it is worthwhile to examine Fiction in the Archives, published in 1987. The French translation from 1988 and the Brazilian translation from 2001 both avoided the English title, opting for Pour sauver sa vie and Histórias de Perdão, respectively. In my view, this choice obscures the theoretical foundation that underlies the book’s argument.

In a 2003 article, the author elucidated the reasons behind choosing this title, which had surprised some historians. She clarified that the term “fiction” was used to describe the meticulous crafting of the lettres de rémission, where condemned individuals sought royal grace for their crimes on special occasions, such as a monarch’s birthday, ceremonial city entries, the birth of an heir, and certain religious festivals.

Although the letters exhibit the clerical touch and adhere to legal formalities, Natalie Zemon Davis argued it was possible to discern the voice of the accused, as they needed to construct a plausible narrative (Davis, 2003, p. 24). Thus, “fiction,” as applied in the book, refers to the text’s “forming, shaping, and molding” nature, rather than implying any artificial or fictitious quality, suggesting the potential to celebrate stories of forgiveness as new evidence rather than diminishing them (Davis, 2003, p. 25).

The explanation is satisfactory, but I will further support the justification through a lexical digression. The word “fiction” is French in origin, with its first recorded English use around 1483⁸. The Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française traces the term’s meanings from 1694 onward, identifying nine similar uses. Notably, in 1718, the legal sense of the term emerges: first, it should be noted that a legal fiction is “a fiction introduced or authorized by law in favor of someone,” with various examples in Roman law. By 1935, this definition shifted slightly, describing “legal fiction” as a “supposition introduced or authorized by law in favor of someone,” without needing Roman law justification. Currently, previous definitions are synthesized into “a legal technique by which a fact or situation, not real, is assumed to be real to produce a legal effect.”⁹ Le Petit Robert describes fiction as akin to feindre, meaning pretend, referencing literature’s imaginative creation and law’s use, where fiction is “a procedure of supposing a fact or situation differing from reality to deduce legal consequences.”¹⁰

Notably, there is an important distinction between the consulted English and French dictionaries: the former consistently associate the word with imagination and invention—depicting fictitious people or events—while the latter, in at least two entries, presents a more intricate definition.¹¹ It is plausible that Natalie Zemon Davis intended to retain the dual interpretation of fiction: both as imagination unbound from reality, as in literature, and as legally sanctioned imagination that allows non-occurring events to be treated by the law as if they had occurred to achieve legal results. This argument gains strength as the primary sources forming the book’s basis possess legal significance, specifically the lettres de rémission, or letters of pardon.

By examining the underlying models in the defendants’ narratives, Natalie Zemon Davis identified affinities between the defendants’ letters and contemporaneous practices: the increasing habit of confession amid religious reform; storytelling evenings; and the various forms of oral literature, which were prevalent among largely illiterate populations. Consistently seeking the exceptional and qualitative—elements that elude quantification—she observed that letters written by men were shorter and more laconic compared to those by women, which were abundant with details and examples, enhancing persuasive elements against the prevalent discredit directed at women.¹² Claude Gauvard interprets this observation as the central thesis of the book: “a narrative with two faces” (Gauvard, 1989, p. 1548). While introducing a gender bias to object analysis is significant, it is my belief that the core of the work lies in the connection between the fiction of the archives and what was emerging in France at that time, as well as the dialectical relationship between the two.

Before analyzing letters of pardon, Natalie Zemon Davis spent decades reading them, fascinated by their “fictional qualities” and “authors’ abilities to shape crime events into narratives” (Davis, 1987, p. 2). Diverging from “scientific history,” which argued for removing fictional elements from documents, she focused on these fictional aspects, aligning her work with literary criticism without fully identifying with it.

The theories prevalent during the 1980s were not the sole support for Zemon Davis’ exploration of fiction in archives; more importantly, her historical perspective drove her reading of the lettres de rémission. This perspective, informed by 16th-century rhetoric, suggested that legal discourse necessitated fictional devices without implying deception, making the significance of legal fiction, a concept in 17th-century French lexicon, even more apparent. For contemporary legal thought, fictional artifice added verisimilitude and beauty to the text without implying fraud.¹³ Additionally, her historical perspective enabled the capture of modes and strategies employed by past storytellers, reinforcing the democratizing perspective central to Zemon Davis’ concerns. It aided in deciphering how people told stories, how these narratives varied with different storytellers and audiences, and “how the rules governing the plot of these judicial tales of violence and royal grace interacted with broader contemporary habits of explanation, description, and evaluation.” By examining common threads within varied narrative structures, both popular and scholarly, the historian compared them with accounts of “real events,” investigating the relationship between such true records and stories of forgiveness (Davis, 1987, p. 4). Her next innovative step was to compare these narratives with stories by French writers from that century, such as Noel du Fail’s Propos rustiques, and queen Marguerite of Navarre, best known for her Heptaméron¹⁴. Given that short stories and novels of the time used “many concrete details as marks of their reality and often claimed to be retelling actual events,” Davis questioned, “what resemblance did they bear to fictions in the archives?” (Davis, 1987, p. 5).

In one of the comparisons made throughout the book between literature and documentary sources, specifically letters, the author examined the narratives of Marguerite of Navarre alongside the stories told by female criminals seeking forgiveness. Regarding the fictional plot, or storyline, the author believed that the queen’s writings revealed less than those of ordinary women but provided much deeper insights into feelings and critical interpretation of facts. In this way, they surpassed most 16th-century writings, which were primarily focused on the discussions of hatred and violence between genders (Davis, 1987, pp. 108-109). When juxtaposed, Marguerite of Navarre and the authors of letters of forgiveness reveal both the similarities and differences in their texts. This includes texts they wrote or, in the case of the illiterate, dictated to others, providing them with plot and arguments. “In the realm of test, threat, and fantasy, the queen-author allows her ladies a wider range of feeling than women allow themselves in letters of remission, and also pardons them for it” (Davis, 1987, p. 110).

Fictional imagination allows for the recreation of personal destinies because it does not need to justify itself and is not bound by reality or societal punishment. Letters of remission, whether written by women or men, “with a corpse to explain, and their texts had ‘wounds’” (Davis, 1987, p. 47). Fiction, more than letters, transcends reality, unbound by everyday life except through the author’s imagination. By drawing on letters of forgiveness—something Natalie Zemon Davis believes occurred—fiction would eventually surpass them as a space for creating possibilities.

When considered within a common historical context, narrative strategies bring fiction and reality, literature, and archival documents closer together. The “stuff of invention” would be “widely distributed throughout society,” allowing information, values, and language habits to flow across divisions between different classes and cultures (Davis, 1987, p. 112). In the mid-sixteenth century, moral reasons had to be believable: “the more probable a story, the more instructive it was, in contrast with the fantasies of the chivalric romance” (Davis, 1987, pp. 112-113). The verisimilitude, fundamental to the convicts’ arguments in their letters, was based on the principle of reality. The links connecting convicts’ tales of forgiveness to the emergence of a new literary form, increasingly less comfortable in the world of fable and fantasy, are thus evident. Was this not, after all, one of the main innovations introduced by Cervantes’ Don Quixote a few years later?

This perspective would lay the foundations for narrative strategies to be seen as constitutive of a new era, where forgiveness assumed unprecedented importance. Authors such as Rabelais asked for forgiveness in the epilogues of their books, while others, such as Shakespeare, requested it from audiences watching their plays full of “offenses.” In these requests, the historian saw evidence that these authors recognized both the power of their works to hurt and as a source of new power (Davis, 1987, p. 113).

In the final paragraph of the book, Natalie Zemon Davis confesses to wondering whether she should seek forgiveness from her deceased characters, considering their writings often made her laugh. This confession aligns her with the women and men of the 16th century: Marguerite of Navarre, who forgave the criminals she animated in Heptaméron; Montaigne, who confessed to laughing and crying about similar matters; and Calvin, who accused priests of turning penitents’ confessions into humorous stories. Nevertheless, Natalie Zemon Davis distances herself from them and those creatures fighting for forgiveness because maintaining distance allows her to recount and fulfill the ethical obligation she imposed on herself in her historiographical practice: to give them a voice without asserting the certainty of fully understanding their intentions or accurately reproducing events as they occurred. By sharing doubt through a narrative crafted to closely approach a distant world using carefully constructed resources, she leaves behind one of the most beautiful legacies in historiography. This is a principal reason for regarding her as the patron saint of modern studies.

Figure 1
: Natalie Zemon Davis and her colleagues at the Department of History of Brown University

References

• BATTERSON, Steve. The Prosecution of Chandler Davis: McCarthysm, Communism and the Myth of Academic Freedom. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023.
• COHEN, Paul. Natalie Zemon Davis - In Memoriam. University of Toronto, 30 out. 2023. Disponível em: https://www.history.utoronto.ca/news/natalie-zemon-davis-memoriam-0 Acesso em: 31 mar. 2025.
  » https://www.history.utoronto.ca/news/natalie-zemon-davis-memoriam-0
• CROUZET, Denis. Natalie Zemon Davis: L'histoire tout feu tout flamme. Entretiens avec Denis Crouzet Paris: Albain Michel, 2004.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Eight Essays: Stanford University Press, 1975.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Men, Women and Violence: Some Reflections on Equality. Smith Alumnae Quarterly, April 1977.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Les cultures du peuple. Rituels, saviors et résistances au 16e siècle. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1979.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Anthropology and History in the 1980's. In: RABB, Theodore K.; ROTBERG, Robert I. The New History: The 1980's and Beyond - Studies in Interdisciplinary History. Princeton University Press, 1983. p. 268-275.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth Century France Stanford University Press, 1987.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Pour sauver sa vie. Les récits de pardon au XVIe siècle. Paris: Seuil, 1988a.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. On the Lame. The American Historical Review, v. 93, n. 3, p. 572-603, June 1988b.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Culturas do Povo - sociedade e cultura no início da França moderna. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1990.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Women and the world of the Annales. History Workshop Journal, v. 33, n. 1, p. 121-137, 1992.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Histórias de Perdão e seus narradores na França do século XVI São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon; FARGE, Arlette. Histoire des femmes en Occident. Direção de Michelle Perrot e Georges Duby. Tomo 3, Du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Tempus - Perrin, 2002.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. The Historian and Literary Uses. New York: Professions, 2003.
• DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Nas Margens: Três Mulheres do século XVII. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2005.
• DAVIS, Natalie. Trickster travels: A Sixteenth Muslim Between Words. New York: Hill & Wang, 2006.
• DAVIS, Natalie. Léon Africain, un voyageur entre deux mondes. Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot, Payot & Rivages, 2014.
• DAVIS, Natalie. Listening to the Languages of the People: Lazare Sainéan on Romanian, Yiddish, and French. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2022.
• FINLAY, Robert. The Refashioning Martin Guerre. The American Historical Review, v. 93, n. 3, p. 553-571, June 1988.
• France Culture. Les femmes dans les Annales - publié le vendredi 8 décembre 2017. Disponível em: https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/la-fabrique-de-l-histoire/les-femmes-dans-les-annales-8843644 Acesso em: 31 mar. 2025. [podcast].
  » https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/la-fabrique-de-l-histoire/les-femmes-dans-les-annales-8843644
• GAUVARD, Claude. Compte-rendu de Natalie Zemon Davis. Pour sauver sa vie. Annales - E.S.C ., 44e. année, n. 6, nov./déc. 1989.
• GINZBURG, Carlo. Prove e possibilità. In: DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Il ritorno di Martin Guerre: Un caso di doppia identità nella Francia del Cinquecento. Turim, 1984. p. 129-154.
• GINZBURG, Carlo. Relações de força: História, retórica, prova. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002.
• GINZBURG, Carlo. Provas e possibilidades. In: GINZBURG, Carlo. O fio e os rastros: Verdadeiro, falso, fictício. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. p. 311-338.
• GRAFTON, Anthony. A Present for Natalie. H-France Salon, v. 11, n. 15, p. 1-2, 2019.
• GREENBLATT, Stephen. Renaissance Self-fashioning: From More to Shakespeare University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• LUKÁCS, György. A Teoria do Romance São Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades; Editora 34, 2000.
• LOYER, Emmanuelle. Natalie Zemon Davis dans les recoins de l'histoire: Entretien avec Emmanuelle Loyer. Episódio 2, Les missions de l'histoire: les vies ordinaire. Podcast France Culture, diffusé du 30/IV au 04/IV/2007. Disponível em: www.mediatheques.strasbourg.eu Acesso em: 31 mar. 2025.
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• MAUSS, Marcel. Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques. L'Année Sociologique, v. I, 1923-1924.
• MAUSS, Marcel. Sociologie et Anthropologie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980.
• MELETÍNSKI, E. M. Do mito à literatura. Cotia: Ateliê Editorial, 2024.
• MONTAIGNE, Michel de. Do desmentir. In: MONTAIGNE, Michel de. Ensaios, v. 2. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2000. p. 495-502.
• MONTAIGNE, Michel de. Dos coxos. In :MONTAIGNE, Michel de. Ensaios, v. 3. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2009. p. 169-195.
• SAHLINS, Marshall. Stone Age Economics Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1972.
• ROPPER, Hugh Trevor. Renaissance Essais Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1986.
• WOLF, Ismael. Resenha sobre: DAVIS, Natalie Zemon. Decentering History: Local Stories and Cultural Crossings in a Global World. History and Theory, v. 50 p. 188-202, maio 2011.

• DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT:
  The entire dataset supporting the results of this study has been published within the article itself.
• 1
  Technical editing of the translation: Verônica Calsoni Lima (Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro).
• 2
  “One of my most powerful memories of Natalie is the uncontained joy she expressed at learning that my wife and I had welcomed a child” (Cohen, 2023, p. 10).
• 3
  The University of Toronto prides itself on having one of the oldest programs on the subject, as stated on the University’s Women and Gender Studies Institute website, which cites the course offered in 1971 by Natalie Zemon Davis and Jill Ker Conway. Available at: https://wgsi.utoronto.ca/about/history/. Accessed on: Jan. 2, 2025.
• 4
  The Davis Center funds weekly seminars on various topics, chosen for a two-year period and attended by experts from different parts of the world. Available at: https://history.princeton.edu/centers-programs/shelby-cullom-davis-center. Accessed on: Jan. 2, 2025
• 5
  This consideration was attributed to David Nirenberg. Available at: https://ww.ias.edu/ideas/natalie-z-davis-1928-2023. Accessed on: Feb. 3, 2025.
• 6
  The author opens the first chapter with an explanation of her character’s Arabic names, continuing this discussion in the following pages. See: Davis (2014, p. 11–13).
• 7
  “I think we can agree with Hayden White that the world does not just “present itself to perception in the form of well-made stories, with central subjects, proper beginnings, middles, and ends.” And in the diverse efforts to define the character of historical narrative, I think we can agree with Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, and Lionel Gossman that shaping choices of language, detail, and order are needed to present an account that seems to both writer and reader true, real, meaningful, and/or explanatory.” See: Davis (1987, p. 3).
• 8
  Available at: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/fiction_n?tl=true. Accessed on: Mar. 31, 2025. The reference would be from a translation by painter, printer, merchant, and diplomat William Caxton. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Caxton. Accessed on: Mar. 31, 2025.
• 9
  Available at: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9F0680. Accessed on: March 31, 2025.
• 10
  Davis (2003, p. 702).
• 11
  The following sources were consulted for English: Oxford English Dictionary (Available at: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/fiction_n?tl=true. Accessed on: March 26, 2025); Cambridge Dictionary (Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fiction. Accessed on: March 26, 2025); Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. New Edition, Longman, 1987; Webster New World Dictionary on the American Language. Second College Edition. NY, The World Publishing Company, 1972. NTC’s American English Learner’s Dictionary. NTC Publishing Group, 1975. For French: Le Petit Robert. Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française. By Paul Robert. Société du Nouveau Littré – SNL, 1976. Dictionnaire Larrousse (Available at: https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/synonymes/fiction/9434#:~:text=Cr%C3%A9ation%20de%20l’imagination.,%E2%80%93%20Litt%C3%A9raire%20%3A%20songe. Accessed on: Mar. 26, 2025); Dictionnaire Le Robert (Available at: https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/fiction. Accessed at: Mar. 26, 2025. Available at: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9F0680. Accessed on Mar. 31, 2025).
• 12
  The peculiarities of the lettres de rémission presented by women are examined in chapter 3, Bloodshed and the Woman’s Voice (Davis, 1987, pp. 77-110).
• 13
  “To look for the ‘fictive’ aspects of a letter of remission would not by sixteenth century definition inevitably be a quest for fraud” (Davis, 1987, p. 4).
• 14
  Marguerite of Navarre (1492–1549), born in Angoulême, was the sister of Francis I, King of France, and became queen through her marriage to Henry II of Navarre. Inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron, she wrote 72 tales that remained unpublished until 1558, when they were posthumously published under the title Heptaméron. Noel du Faïl (1520–1591) was a jurist from the rural nobility of France, best known for his Propos Rustiques (1547), a collection of tales addressing French rural life, and one of the few literary texts of the period focused on peasant life. It seems appropriate to recall that one of the works frequently invoked as foundational for modern fiction—and even for the novel, according to some authors—appeared shortly thereafter: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), published from 1605 to 1615. For the role played by Cervantes in the emergence of the novel, see Lukács (2000, pp. 106–108); Meletínski (2000, pp. 106–108; 143–148).

Data availability

The entire dataset supporting the results of this study has been published within the article itself.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  12 Dec 2025
• Date of issue
  2025

History

• Received
  29 Apr 2025
• Reviewed
  20 Aug 2025
• Accepted
  30 July 2025