The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

by Ginzburg, Carlo

• ISBN13: 9780801843877
• ISBN10: 0801843871
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-03-01
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

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."

Table of Contents

Translators' Note	viii	(3)
Preface to the English Edition	xi	(2)
Preface to the Italian Edition	xiii	(4)
Acknowledgments	xxvii
1 Menocchio	1	(2)
2 The town	3	(2)
3 First interrogation	5	(1)
4 "Possessed?"	6	(1)
5 From Concordia to Portogruaro	7	(2)
6 "To speak out against his superiors"	9	(4)
7 An archaic society	13	(3)
8 "They oppress the poor"	16	(2)
9 "Lutherans" and Anabaptists	18	(3)
10 A miller, a painter, a buffoon	21	(6)
11 "My opinions came out of my head"	27	(1)
12 The books	28	(2)
13 Readers of the town	30	(1)
14 Printed pages and "fantastic opinions"	31	(1)
15 Blind alley?	32	(2)
16 The temple of the virgins	34	(1)
17 The funeral of the Madonna	34	(2)
18 The father of Christ	36	(1)
19 Judgment day	37	(4)
20 Mandeville	41	(3)
21 Pigmies and cannibals	44	(3)
22 "God of nature"	47	(2)
23 The three rings	49	(2)
24 Written culture and oral culture	51	(1)
25 Chaos	52	(2)
26 Dialogue	54	(2)
27 Mythical cheeses and real cheeses	56	(2)
28 The monopoly over knowledge	58	(2)
29 The words of the Fioretto	60	(2)
30 The function of metaphors	62	(1)
31 "Master," "steward," and "workers"	62	(3)
32 An hypothesis	65	(3)
33 Peasant religion	68	(1)
34 The soul	69	(1)
35 "I don't know"	70	(1)
36 Two spirits, seven souls, four elements	71	(1)
37 The flight of an idea	72	(3)
38 Contradictions	75	(1)
39 Paradise	76	(1)
40 A new "way of life"	77	(3)
41 "To kill priests"	80	(1)
42 A "new world"	81	(5)
43 End of the interrogations	86	(1)
44 Letter to the judges	87	(2)
45 Rhetorical figures	89	(2)
46 First sentence	91	(2)
47 Prison	93	(2)
48 Return to the town	95	(3)
49 Denunciations	98	(3)
50 Nocturnal dialogue with the Jew	101	(1)
51 Second trial	102	(1)
52 "Fantasies"	103	(3)
53 "Vanities and dreams"	106	(2)
54 "Oh great, omnipotent, and holy God..."	108	(1)
55 "If only I had died when I was fifteen"	109	(1)
56 Second sentence	110	(1)
57 Torture	111	(1)
58 Scolio	112	(5)
59 Pellegrino Baroni	117	(4)
60 Two millers	121	(4)
61 Dominant culture and subordinate culture	125	(2)
62 Letters from Rome	127	(2)
Notes	129	(44)
Index of Names	173