Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes

Natalie Zemon Davis was a preeminent social and cultural historian of early modern Europe. Her many books include The Return of Martin Guerre, Women on the Margins, Fiction in the Archives, and Trickster Travels. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal, she taught at Brown University, the University of Toronto, the University of California at Berkeley, and Princeton University, where she was Henry Charles Lea Professor of History. Arlette Farge is Director of Research in Modern History, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France. Michelle Perrot is Professor of Contemporary History at the Université de Paris VII.

Becoming attuned to another way of looking at things, listening to other voices, is an enormously challenging and stimulating task. This volume prompts us in some ways to think the unthinkable, imagine the unimaginable… In good Enlightenment fashion, the editors have demonstrated that one interpretation need not preclude another. In so doing, they have laid the foundation for the next stage of women’s history.