The Return Of Martin Guerre By Natalie Zemon Davis

During the course of the semester in my History 395 class we have read three historical monographs that covers a wide range of ordinary people in history. The first monograph we read was The Return of Martin Guerre by social and cultural historian Natalie Zemon Davis. The book covers a historical event about a 16th century French man named Martin Guerre who had his identity stolen by Arnaud du Tilh, and the reactions of the village and “his” family. The second monograph we read was Neighbors by political historian Jan T. Gross. The book is about a massacre in the small Jewish town of Jedwabne, Poland during World War II. The attacks on the Jews were not caused by the Nazis, as was previously believed, but by the Poles themselves. The third

In The Return of Martin Guerre tightness of “fit” between evidence and argument is very loose. Davis uses her interpretation of the evidence to show the female perspective of the story. For example, Martin Guerre’s wife, Bertrande de Rols, who her sources portray as a weak, duped woman, Davis has as a calculating strong woman.This is important to history because Davis challenges previous accounts of history and gives new perspectives that were not previously considered; however, in doing this, she ignores evidence to support her viewpoints. On the other hand, in Ar’n’t I a Woman? tightness of “fit” between evidence and argument is very tight. White uses her numerous sources to shed light on a part of history that has been ignored by historians. In each section she uses personal stories with historical information to showcase the life of a slave woman. By using so many sources as evidence she adds validity to her argument; nevertheless, by using too many individual narratives in one section a person can lose sight of the argument. In Neighbors there is also a tight “fit” between evidence and argument. Gross uses his evidence to prove to the Polish government and others that they were not all victims of Nazis during the second World War but perpetrators themselves in that the Polish of Jedwabne killed their Jewish neighbors without prompting from the Nazis. Gross lets the facts speak for themselves using firsthand accounts of the event. For instance, Boleslaw Ramotowski notes “I want to stress that Germans did not participate in the murder of Jews; they just stood and took pictures of how Poles mistreated the Jews.” Through his historical account Gross tells a clear story without excess interpretation or confusing numbers of stories or sources. The tightness of “fit”