Threads and Traces: True False Fictive - Softcover

Ginzburg, Carlo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520274482 ISBN 13: 9780520274488

Publisher: University of California Press, 2012

Synopsis

Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents? In his answers, Ginzburg peels away layers of subsequent readings and interpretations that envelop every text to make a larger argument about history and fiction. Interwoven with compelling autobiographical references, Threads and Traces bears moving witness to Ginzburg’s life as a European Jew, the abiding strength of his scholarship, and his deep engagement with the historian’s craft.

About this title

About the Author

Carlo Ginzburg is retired from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy). He is the author of numerous books that have been translated into English including The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.

From the Back Cover

“Carlo Ginzburg weaves a spell-binding web of learning and surprises as he explores the question of truth in history and fiction and his own multiple engagement with the past. Whether dealing with Montaigne’s cannibals, Italian shamans, or anti-Semitic forgeries, Threads and Traces is a powerful and moving statement of the stakes in historical knowledge from one of our greatest historians.” —Natalie Zemon Davis, author of Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds

Previous Praise for Carlo Ginzburg

“Ginzburg is a historian with an insatiable curiosity, who pursues even the faintest of clues with all the zest of a born detective until every fragment of evidence can be fitted into place.” —J.H. Elliott, New York Review of Books

“Carlo Ginzburg has many claims to be considered the outstanding European historian of the generation which came of age in the late Sixties. Certainly few have equalled him in originality, variety and audacity.” —Perry Anderson, London Review of Books

“Ginzburg's scholarship is dazzling and profound.” —Publisher’s Weekly

From the Inside Flap

Carlo Ginzburg weaves a spell-binding web of learning and surprises as he explores the question of truth in history and fiction and his own multiple engagement with the past. Whether dealing with Montaignes cannibals, Italian shamans, or anti-Semitic forgeries, Threads and Traces is a powerful and moving statement of the stakes in historical knowledge from one of our greatest historians. Natalie Zemon Davis, author of Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds

Previous Praise for Carlo Ginzburg

Ginzburg is a historian with an insatiable curiosity, who pursues even the faintest of clues with all the zest of a born detective until every fragment of evidence can be fitted into place. J.H. Elliott, New York Review of Books

Carlo Ginzburg has many claims to be considered the outstanding European historian of the generation which came of age in the late Sixties. Certainly few have equalled him in originality, variety and audacity. Perry Anderson, London Review of Books

Ginzburg's scholarship is dazzling and profound. Publishers Weekly

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520274482
• ISBN 13: 9780520274488
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336