The Return Of Martin Guerre By Natalie Zemon Davis

The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis is a sixteenth century novel soap opera about a popular trial of Martin Guerre’s reappearance to Artigat after abandoning his wife and family for eight or more years. But the Martin that appearance is a poser by the name of Arnaude du Tilh, who is looking to cash in on someone else’s wealth until the real Martin Guerre comes back to Artigat. In this critique of Natalie Zemon Davis’, The Return of Martin Guerre, I will analyze her reason for writing the novel, her use of data, and her diction. Natalie’s reason for writing this novel was to present the lives of peasants in France during the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, for she wanted to give the readers a visual of their glories

While she was writing the novel, she ended up finding another case of fraud. The case involved two men that were found guilty of signing legal documents in another man’s name, and they were sentences to death (pg. 72). That case brought up the discussion of torture being used during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. According to the data Davis found and used from Archive for Reformation History torture was used more in fraud cases, like Martin Guerre’s case, than in other cases (pg. 146). Nonetheless, Davis’ bias on adultery was just as extreme as her bias for fraud. I liked how in “Histoire prodigieuse, Histoire tragique” Davis asked, “Was the weakness of the sex really so great that wives could not tell the difference between married love and adultery,” because of Bertrande’s actions with Tilh during the absence of the real Martin Guerre (pg. 110). For adultery during the sixteenth century was considered a crime. Jean de Coras believed that Bertrande should have been found guilty of the crime because he believed that she knew Tilh was not her real husband and continued to have relations with him, which resulted in birthing a child (pg. 88). I liked how Davis illustrated how Bertrande’s family was determined to find ways to keep her from being criminalized for the act of adultery in the middle of the chapter “The Trial at Rieux” because they did not want the village

Most of her data came from the archive departments of France, Jean de Coras’ works, and Guillume Le Sueur’s works. I loved how she created a whole chapter, “The Storyteller”, dedicated to Jean de Coras and Guillume Le Sueur. She allowed the readers to see their background before the trial and afterwards. For Coras was not just there as a judge, but he was also recording the trail for documenting purposes. His recordings of the case resulted in a work called the Arrest Memorable. According to Davis, Coras was able to relate to de Tilh because he saw some traits of himself in him; which allowed him to make a personal connection to the novel and the case, and resulted in the novel missing some details (pg. 102). Unlike Coras, Le Sueur’s novel Admiranda historia gave the data from the case verbatim, which resulted in it being issued before the royal office had a chance to approve the work (pg. 104). I enjoyed how Davis delivered the letters from the Archives department of Haute- Garonne, displaying the distant relationship between Coras and his second wife, Jacquette de Busi (pg. 99). Her delivery put the reader into the room with Coras and Jacquette as they signed off on each