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

by Carlo Ginzburg, John Tedeschi (Translator), Carlo Ginzburg (Preface by), Anne C. Tedeschi (Translator), Stephen Twilley (Translator)

Overview

Coming soon! The Cheese and the Worms (fiftieth anniversary edition) by Carlo Ginzburg.

Coming soon! The Cheese and the Worms (fiftieth anniversary edition) by Carlo Ginzburg.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421454641
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	04/28/2026
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carlo Ginzburg has taught at the University of Bologna, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. The recipient of the 2010 International Balzan Prize, he is author of The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller and Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, also published by Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2013 Edition ix

Translators' Note xv

Preface to the English Edition xix

Preface to the Italian Edition xxi

Acknowledgments xxxv

1 Menocchio 1

2 The town 2

3 First interrogation 5

4 "Possessed?" 6

5 From Concordia to Portogruaro 6

6 "To speak out against his superiors" 8

7 An archaic society 12

8 "They oppress the poor" 14

9 "Lutherans" and Anabaptists 16

10 A miller, a painter, a buffoon 19

11 "My opinions came out of my head" 26

12 The books 27

13 Readers of the town 28

14 Printed pages and "fantastic opinions" 30

15 Blind alley? 31

16 The temple of the virgins 32

17 The funeral of the Madonna 32

18 The father of Christ 34

19 Judgment day 35

20 Mandeville 39

21 Pigmies and cannibals 42

22 "God of nature" 45

23 The three rings 47

24 Written culture and oral culture 49

25 Chaos 49

26 Dialogue 51

27 Mythical cheeses and real cheeses 54

28 The monopoly over knowledge 56

29 The words of the Fioretto 57

30 The function of metaphors 58

31 "Master," "steward," and "workers" 59

32 An hypothesis 61

33 Peasant religion 64

34 The soul 65

35 "I don't know" 66

36 Two spirits, seven souls, four elements 67

37 The flight of an idea 68

38 Contradictions 70

39 Paradise 72

40 A new "way of life" 73

41 "To kill priests" 75

42 A "new world" 77

43 End of the interrogations 82

44 Letter to the judges 82

45 Rhetorical figures 84

46 First sentence 86

47 Prison 88

48 Return to the town 90

49 Denunciations 92

50 Nocturnal dialogue with the Jew 95

51 Second trial 96

52 "Fantasies" 97

53 "Vanities and dreams" 100

54 "Oh great, omnipotent, and holy God…" 102

55 "If only I had died when I was fifteen" 103

56 Second sentence 104

57 Torture 104

58 Scolio 105

59 Pellegrino Baroni 111

60 Two millers 115

61 Dominant culture and subordinate culture 119

62 Letters from Rome 120

Notes 123

Index of Names 175

What People are Saying About This

Lauro Martines

Ginzburg has excavated a marvelous and melancholy tale. Lay readers know that historical work of this order requires formidable skills and dogged research... Ginzburg's discovery of Menocchio is a dazzling entry into the historical world of popular culture.

Editorial Reviews

A wonderful book . . . 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. The work of reconstruction is brilliant, the writing superbly readable, and by the end of the book the reader who has followed Dr. Ginzburg in his wanderings through the labyrinthine mind of the miller of the Friuli will take leave of this strange and quirky old man with genuine regret.
—J. H. Elliott, New York Review of Books

Ginzburg has excavated a marvelous and melancholy tale. Lay readers know that historical work of this order requires formidable skills and dogged research . . . Ginzburg's discovery of Menocchio is a dazzling entry into the historical world of popular culture.
—Lauro Martines, Washington Post

From the Publisher

Ginzburg's project breaks the mold of social history by building a narrative from the bottom up, using source materials as far removed from structures of power and influence as he could dredge up, trying even to get at the texture of oral culture lost to time. 

The Paris Review

Ginzburg has excavated a marvelous and melancholy tale. Lay readers know that historical work of this order requires formidable skills and dogged research . . . Ginzburg's discovery of Menocchio is a dazzling entry into the historical world of popular culture.

Washington Post - Lauro Martines

A wonderful book . . . 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. The work of reconstruction is brilliant, the writing superbly readable, and by the end of the book the reader who has followed Dr. Ginzburg in his wanderings through the labyrinthine mind of the miller of the Friuli will take leave of this strange and quirky old man with genuine regret.

New York Review of Books - J. H. Elliott

Why should we reread the story of Menocchio thirty-eight years after its publication? First, this new edition is a timely update. Ginzburg has penned a new preface and bibliographical information has been augmented. Second, because it is a work of rare scholarship that no student should forget, despite the fact that the context in which this book was crafted has significantly changed.

Sixteenth Century Journal - Cristiano Zanetti

A wonderful book... 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. The work of reconstruction is brilliant, the writing superbly readable, and by the end of the book the reader who has followed Dr. Ginzburg in his wanderings through the labyrinthine mind of the miller of the Friuli will take leave of this strange and quirky old man with genuine regret.

New York Review of Books