The Cheese and the Worms

Carlo Ginzburg is a noted historian and pioneer of microhistory. He is most famous for his ground-breaking book, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, which examined the beliefs of an Italian heretic, Menocchio, from Montereale Valcellina.

出版者:The Johns Hopkins University Press

作者:Carlo Ginzburg

页数:188

译者:John Tedeschi

出版时间:1992-03-01

价格:USD 19.95

装帧:Paperback

图书标签:新文化史历史微观史新史学Ginzburg微观史学microhistory历史学

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A survey of popular culture in 16th century Italy. Ginzburg’s study The Cheese & The Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-century Miller, first published in 1976, is one of those fascinating micro-histories which explores the remote lives of unknown and forgotten people. The story of Menocchio is one of a peasant life of obscurity but also one of strange and powerful ideas – confused and half-baked even – but powerful enough to bring him into conflict with the Inquisition and thereafter to the final purgatorial flames.

“I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos … 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, and among that number of angels, there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time ….”

This was Menocchio’s own version of Genesis, recounted at his first interrogation: it has perhaps something in common with modern chaos theory. Sadly, the inquisitors did not appreciate the idea that God might have started out as a worm in a primordial curd. Nonetheless, this was Menocchio’s oft-repeated explanation, one he never recanted. More than an independent mind, Menocchio’s was a rebel spirit, harshly critical of Church and clergy and determined to have his say. His ‘learning’ was a fascinating hotch-potch of superstition, oral tradition, ‘strong’ ideas, misunderstood reading, peasant radicalism, paganism and ‘cottage cheese cosmology’. Ginzburg’s book details the patient mechanism of the Inquisition in Counter Reformation Italy as it sought to eradicate suspected heresy and heretical groups rather in the same way that Stalin suspected counter-revolution everywhere.

Bruno burned for the books he had written; Menocchio burned for the books he had misunderstood. Both burnings demonstrate among other things the truth of the old adage; a little learning can be a dangerous thing. Menocchio’s roasting generated more heat than light but at least it did not contradict the Laws of Thermodynamics. Today in Montereale the visitor will find the Domenico Scandella Social Centre. In the piazza there is a monument in the form of a large wheel of cheese with one slice missing. Our heretic has become a hero. Stephen Dedalus said of Bruno that, heretic or not, ‘he was terribly burnt’; so was the poor miller from Friuli.

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“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”.

快速翻完，微观史的代表作，想到了史景迁的《王氏之死》，故事性强的同时，有时候可能难免落入“overinterpretation”的窠臼。

“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”.

金氏的史学论述可见于此书的序言。文中大部分内容是史料分析，而论述则夹杂其间及见于58-61章。此书内容概括可见豆瓣上唯一一篇评论。 这本微历史的最后点睛一笔点在了上流社会文化与低层大众文化的交互交流。

should have read earlier...