Description
"Carlo Ginzburg recreated, unforgettably, the mind of a sixteenth-century heretical miller (in The Cheese and the Worms) and the world of Piero della Francesca (in The Enigma of Piero). He has always been fascinated by the resemblances between myths and beliefs from different cultures. Ordinary historical methods do not seem able to explain such connections. These studies are Ginzburg's explorations of symbols, images and beliefs in apparently marginal corners of European history. In a reconstruction of the trial of an old woman accused of witchcraft in Modena in 1519, he uncovers the ways in which official religion forced popular piety into the mould of orthodoxy. A comparison between the techniques of the hunter, the detective, the historian and the psychoanalyst leads to reflection on the role of clues in human culture. The influence of ancient legends about werewolves on Freud's analysis of the Wolf-Man shows how historical myths can be understood without recourse to irrationalism. Hugh Trevor-Roper, reviewing one of Ginzburg's earlier books, referred to his intense yet delicate scholarship. That meticulous craft is demonstrated here in an essay on the leakage of Nazi themes into pre-war studies of mythology, notably in the work of Georges Dumézil. Ginzburg also confirms his reputation as a bravura historian of small details: the symbolism of forbidden knowledge in the Renaissance, the erotic in the paintings of Titian. This is the most wide-ranging book so far from one the world's most subtle historians".
