RafasLeftFoot - 25/10/2017 11:31
no one even mentioned the cheese
Just for you; enjoy...
Was the World Made Out of Cheese?
BY JONATHAN KANDELL;
Published: November 17, 1991
CARLO GINZBURG'S BOOK-LINED apartment overlooks the medieval towers of Bologna and the fortress-thick walls of its university, the oldest in Europe. Florence lies only an hour away by train, and Venice isn't much farther. It's hard to imagine a more orthodox setting for a man acclaimed as one of the world's premier historians, with strong expertise in the Italian Renaissance and late Middle Ages.
But ambiance aside, there is nothing conventional about Ginzburg's career or scholarship. His work ignores the powerful Venetian doges and Florentine princes, as well as the other great patrons responsible for the cultural treasures that draw millions of visitors eager to witness the grandeur of Italy's golden age. Instead, Ginzburg has fashioned his lofty reputation by pursuing topics that at first glance might seem arcane, occultist, eccentric. He himself labels his subjects "peripheral phenomena," though he's quick to assert they are as relevant to the course of Western civilization as a biography of Machiavelli or an analysis of Luther's rebellion against the Vatican.
Ginzburg spent six years figuring out what a 16th-century miller meant when he said the world was created from rotting cheese. He devoted even more time unraveling the beliefs of peasants who were denounced by the Inquisition as witches and werewolves. One of Ginzburg's more recent efforts was to link Oedipus' swollen foot and Cinderella's missing slipper to ancient myths about journeying to the afterworld. "I received a letter from a classical scholar a few days ago -- he loved that one and agreed with me completely," Ginzburg says.
This is history? you may well ask. Only a generation ago, history was mainly about great events and leaders marching forward in chronological fashion: 1776, the Declaration of Independence, Washington and Jefferson; 1815, Waterloo, Napoleon and Wellington; 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin and Trotsky. If we could recite the dates, describe the cataclysms, memorize the names, we could confidently assume to have mastered the outlines we had of the past.
But in recent years, growing numbers of historians, particularly in Europe, have shifted their inquiries to the mass of humanity who existed outside the political and social mainstream. What did peasants and artisans think about centuries ago? How were their beliefs disseminated, and how did they differ from notions that prevailed in more affluent, literate society?
It continues:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/17/magazine/was-the-world-made-out-of-cheese.html?pagewanted=all