41 pages • 1 hour read
Natalie Zemon DavisThe Return of Martin Guerre
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Storyteller”
Davis gives the reader a detailed description of Jean de Coras in this chapter. She also mentions Guillaume Le Sueur, the writer of Historia, or the “Admirable History of the Pseudo-Martin of Toulouse.” Very little is known about Le Sueur, but Davis asserts that he had ambitions as a lawyer and a writer.
Jean de Coras, on the other hand, was somewhat well-known during his lifetime, so quite a bit of his biography has been recorded. He was a prodigy, “interpreting the civil law from a podium in Toulouse” (96) from the age of thirteen. After studying law and winning accolades for his academic work, he enjoyed a celebrated career as a university lecturer. Coras also had direct experience with the law. When his mother died, she left Coras everything, but his father did not allow Coras full access to the goods and property. Coras sued his father, and his inheritance was validated, though his father was given access to all goods and property until he died.
Coras was a popular instructor of civil law, and he was also known as a competent writer of “Latin commentaries on the Roman law” (97). He married and had a daughter and a son, and then, after he lost his first wife, he remarried. His second wife was Jacquette de Bussi, and “Coras is expressively, deeply, almost foolishly fond” (98) of her. They were both committed to Protestantism, and after they married, Coras wrote a treatise in the French vernacular against secret marriages that reflects Protestant beliefs. Davis points out that by the time Coras served as a judge in the Criminal Chamber, “he was not a man of uniform sentiment and consistent goals” (100); at one point, he warned readers against being too passionate in their love relationships, which contradicts his own deep attachment to his own wife. Davis claims that, in Arnaud du Tilh, Coras “recognized a man with some of his own qualities” (102), which explains partly why Coras expressed sympathy for him and believed his fraudulent claims.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Histoire prodigieuse, Histoire tragique”
This chapter examines Coras’s Arrest Memorable in detail and its popularity at the time of its publication. As well, Davis mentions the role Le Sueur’s Historia played in the spread of the story.
Le Sueur’s Historia “fits readily into the genre of the news account” (104), printed first in Latin and then later translated into French, while Coras’s Arrest Memorable defies categorization. It too was available to readers both in Latin and in the vernacular, French, but Coras had applied the traditional form of a legal commentary to his own unofficial telling of the story. Within this framework, Coras took advantage of “a chance to comment on central issues in the legal practice of his day” (106), and he also had here an opportunity to “discuss marriage and its problems” (106), and to address religious matters. Davis asserts that Coras “reveals a Protestant sensibility” (107), though she later acknowledges that “Arrest Memorable easily found readers of both religions, and it was printed later in Paris by Catholic houses” (107).
Davis writes of Arrest Memorable as a complex work that is admirable in some ways and flawed in others. Davis explains that “Coras exaggerates certain things and omits others—we might even say that he lies a little—in shaping his account” (108) and she values these flaws especially. Coras wrote with an openness to Arnaud du Tilh’s “prodigious qualities” (109) and to the possibility that he was a magician. As well, Davis considers Coras’s interpretation of Bertrande as a victim of fraud as a flaw, believing rather that Bertrande was a happy accomplice to Arnaud’s duplicity.
Davis mentions one omission in the 1561 edition, when “Coras leaves his audience some room for doubt about whether the Criminal Chamber actually did get the right man” (111); Coras rewrites the statement in the 1565 edition and agrees with the Criminal Chamber, but calls the situation a “tragedy” (111), a notion with which Davis agrees.
Chapters 10-11 Analysis
In Chapters Ten and Eleven, Davis concentrates on the telling of the story by offering detailed characterization of the two key storytellers. Davis posits that though the judge and court reporter, Jean de Coras, and the legal scholar, Guillaume Le Sueur, had professional careers and ambitions in the realms of law, education and literature, something about the story of the peasant Martin Guerre resonated with them on a personal level. Because they felt a kinship of sorts with Martin Guerre, they created emotionally powerful literature about his story, which has given Martin Guerre an immortality typical of a legendary figure.
In Davis’s description of Jean de Coras and the iterations of his work, Arrest Memorable, she returns to the theme of deception and lies, but much more gently than in earlier chapters. She points out flaws in Coras’s account of the trial at Toulouse that may have misled other readers, not to discredit Coras but to emphasize the humanity of Coras and the humanity of any man or woman who bends the rules of society to live a happy and fulfilled life.
