Ginzburg, Davis, and the Rise of Microhistory

Introduction to Microhistory

Thanks to notable figures like Carlo Ginzburg, who first emerged onto the scene in the mid-1970s, microhistory has enjoyed long-lasting popularity. The 1970s heralded the emergence of microhistory as it coincided with postmodernism, a significant historiographical development that deeply challenged the profession and brought it to a new intellectual level of exploration. Since microhistory relies on narrative rather than historian-driven "Why?" questions, it proved an easy vehicle for postmodernists to test their modes of thought. While Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou represents one aspect of microhistory, Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre helped provide new insight into a well-known story by applying her own critical lens to the narrative. With Ginzburg's own contribution, The Cheese and the Worms, creating the framework within which other microhistories were — and continue to be — written, microhistory became what some would call the "middleman" between fiction and historical writing, as seen in present-day microhistory authors and their own interpretations of history.

Microhistory is an intensive historical examination, often of an individual, a single event, or a community, that historians present in a form that is both engaging to read and illuminating about what occurred. The original concept of microhistory and the practice of writing it originated in Italy during the 1970s. It is a blend of cultural history — as Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms demonstrates — and social history. While Ginzburg may not have been the first to pioneer microhistories, his work gave the form its critical momentum.

Ginzburg and The Cheese and the Worms

The Cheese and the Worms, known in its original Italian as Il formaggio e i vermi, is an important and widely recognized scholarly work by Carlo Ginzburg, a celebrated Italian historian. Many regard the book as an exemplary work of microhistory and cultural history, offering a framework that other writers can use when portraying their own versions of historical events. To appreciate its contribution to microhistory and to history more broadly, it is essential to understand who the book examines and what the narrative reveals.

The book observes the worldview and beliefs of Domenico Scandella, also known as Menocchio. Menocchio was from the village of Montereale and worked as an Italian miller. He earned the title of heresiarch through a reputation for teaching unorthodox philosophy. Although he helped educate and inspire those around him, he met a tragic end in 1599 at the age of 67, when he was burned at the stake on the order of Pope Clement VIII.

When books were loaned to Menocchio, his interpretation of their contents may have provided the motivations that ultimately led to his execution for preaching unorthodox ideas. The narrative opens with the preliminary questioning Menocchio endured and his desire to speak freely, as he believed himself to be innocent. As Menocchio himself stated: "I have said that in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed — just as cheese is made out of milk — and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."¹ It was through this mixture of objective facts and subjective interpretation that Ginzburg managed to provide readers not merely with entertaining literature, but with genuine insight into the events that took place at that time.

Contextualization and the Role of Narrative

Research is an important aspect of microhistory, but it is not the only one. Historians who document or collect information from the past tend to record dates and details without exploring how the person or event shaped the world at the time, or how the individual examined might have felt. Microhistory does precisely that: it offers a deeper look into a period or person that compels further examination and ignites curiosity. While critics of microhistory argue that the examination of a topic or person does not go as in depth as needed, in actuality, the manner in which such an examination unfolds in narrative is highly individualized and difficult to evaluate against a standard measure. What is generally found across most microhistory narratives is an added emphasis on contextualization.

Contextualization is the placing of small units of study within a broader context. It is the "bread and butter" of microhistories; without it, microhistorical studies would be deemed to have little significance or meaning. Contextualization is what prevents microhistories from existing as mere works of fiction and places them in a realm closer to empirical scholarship.

It is significant that microhistory has gained the traction it has, thanks to Ginzburg and historians like Davis, because it allows history to reach people without the drudgery of pure facts and the purely objective display of events. When writers of microhistories highlight a person of interest or an event, they bring it to life and add a level of intrigue that empirical scholarship cannot. As many have noted in their own research and writings, history as a bare record of facts is not as compelling as its interpretation. "Do we mean the old-fashioned high school history with lots of dates and battles, biographies that detail who had tea with whom, Whiggish history, strict historicism, Marxist history, or even Foucauldian genealogy?"² That is why books like The Cheese and the Worms made Ginzburg a well-known historian and also catapulted microhistory into the academic world.

Returning to research and the approach historians take when developing microhistories, the work is grounded in a principle similar to that of the qualitative approach: the pursuit of a small unit, such as an individual, can reflect the larger whole. This is the opposite of traditional historical research, which more actively pursues a quantitative approach. Factors like historical demography are often more central to traditional history writing than the effect or significance of a person, event, or community on society at large.

Ginzburg's heretic Menocchio, and his tragic end at the hands of the Pope, illustrates how Menocchio's behavior and philosophy played a role in how society and the powers of the time perceived him. Microhistorians like Ginzburg thus attempt to recreate the relationship between the people involved and the source text or information provided by historical accounts — a practice sometimes understood through the concept of normal exceptions. As one article notes, the various ways in which Ginzburg masters a subject before moving on to another provides a wealth of knowledge that historians can draw upon to write compelling and significant literature: "Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, Ginzburg's latest collection of translated essays on historiography and historical method, abounds in references to philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein, anthropologists from Lafitau to Geertz, and literary figures from Homer to Proust."³