Posted: February 4th, 2015

Comparison of Vigne’s film version with Davis’s Interpretation of the Martin Guerre Episode

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

compare the treatments of the Martin Guerre episode in Vigne’s film and Davis’s short historical monograph. Your essay should probe the aims of the two interpreters, their use of the empirical evidence we have about the episode and its historical setting, and their successes or failures at reaching persuasive interpretations of the incident. Make your paper, in other words, a case study comparing and contrasting a professional historian’s with an artist’s interpretation of a sixteenth-century occurrence. While you will have
to decide what you think “actually happened,” remember that your essay is not an attempt to retell the story, but an analysis of two interpreters of
the past. How do they agree or disagree about what happened? What motivates or influences their conclusions? How can Davis claim (whether
you accept her view or not) that hers is a more historical understanding than Vigne’s?

The Main sources that have to be used are :
1:Norman F. Cantor and Richard I. Schneider, How to Study History
2:John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (5th ed.; 2010)
3:Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History
4:Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
5:Jean de Coras, “Memorable Decision of the High Court of Toulouse…,” TriQuarterly 55 (1982): 86-103,
6:Ed Benson, “Martin Guerre, the Historian and the Filmmakers: An Interview with Natalie Zemon Davis,” Film & History 13 (1983): 49-65;
7:Annette Insdorf, “A Medieval Tale is Relived on Film,” New York Times 5 June 1983: H1+
8:the historians’ debate: Robert Finlay, “The Refashioning of Martin Guerre,” American Historical Review 93 (1988): 553-571
9:Natalie Zemon Davis, “‘On the Lame,'” ibid., 572-603.
10Daniel Vigne’s film Le Retour de Martin Guerre [The Return of Martin Guerre] (1982; remastered director’s cut, 1996)