The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller / Edition 1
by Carlo Ginzburg
The Cheese and the Worms is a study of the popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, a miller brought to trial during the Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records of Domenico Scandella, a miller also known as Menocchio, to show how one person responded to the confusing political and religious conditions of his
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The Cheese and the Worms is a study of the popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, a miller brought to trial during the Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records of Domenico Scandella, a miller also known as Menocchio, to show how one person responded to the confusing political and religious conditions of his time.
For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."
Product Details
- ISBN-13:
- 9780801843877
- Publisher:
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication date:
- 03/28/1992
- Edition description:
- Reprint
- Pages:
- 208
- Product dimensions:
- 6.07(w) x 9.16(h) x 0.57(d)
- Age Range:
- 18 Years
Table of Contents
Preface to the 2013 Edition ix
Translators' Note xv
Preface to the English Edition xix
Preface to the Italian Edition xxi
Acknowledgments xxxv
1 Menocchio 1
2 The town 2
3 First interrogation 5
4 "Possessed?" 6
5 From Concordia to Portogruaro 6
6 "To speak out against his superiors" 8
7 An archaic society 12
8 "They oppress the poor" 14
9 "Lutherans" and Anabaptists 16
10 A miller, a painter, a buffoon 19
11 "My opinions came out of my head" 26
12 The books 27
13 Readers of the town 28
14 Printed pages and "fantastic opinions" 30
15 Blind alley? 31
16 The temple of the virgins 32
17 The funeral of the Madonna 32
18 The father of Christ 34
19 Judgment day 35
20 Mandeville 39
21 Pigmies and cannibals 42
22 "God of nature" 45
23 The three rings 47
24 Written culture and oral culture 49
25 Chaos 49
26 Dialogue 51
27 Mythical cheeses and real cheeses 54
28 The monopoly over knowledge 56
29 The words of the Fioretto 57
30 The function of metaphors 58
31 "Master," "steward," and "workers" 59
32 An hypothesis 61
33 Peasant religion 64
34 The soul 65
35 "I don't know" 66
36 Two spirits, seven souls, four elements 67
37 The flight of an idea 68
38 Contradictions 70
39 Paradise 72
40 A new "way of life" 73
41 "To kill priests" 75
42 A "new world" 77
43 End of the interrogations 82
44 Letter to the judges 82
45 Rhetorical figures 84
46 First sentence 86
47 Prison 88
48 Return to the town 90
49 Denunciations 92
50 Nocturnal dialogue with the Jew 95
51 Second trial 96
52 "Fantasies" 97
53 "Vanities and dreams" 100
54 "Oh great, omnipotent, and holy God…" 102
55 "If only I had died when I was fifteen" 103
56 Second sentence 104
57 Torture 104
58 Scolio 105
59 Pellegrino Baroni 111
60 Two millers 115
61 Dominant culture and subordinate culture 119
62 Letters from Rome 120
Notes 123
Index of Names 175
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