The Cheese and the Worms

The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

By: Carlo Ginzburg, Anne C. Tedeschi - Translator, John Tedeschi - Translator

Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan

The Cheese and the Worms is an incisive study of popular culture in the 16th century as seen through the eyes of one man, the miller known as Menocchio, who was accused of heresy during the Inquisition and sentenced to death. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records to illustrate the religious and social conflicts of the society in which Menocchio lived.

For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony, he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed - just as cheese is made out of milk - and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."

In a thoughtful new preface, Ginzburg offers his own corollary to Menocchio's story as he considers the discrepancy between the intentions of the writer and what gets written. The Italian miller's story and Ginzburg's work continue to resonate with modern listeners because they focus on how oral and written culture are inextricably linked.

©1976 Giulio Einaudi editore; English translation copyright 1980 by The Johns Hopkins University Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.; Edition with new preface copyright 2013 by The Johns Hopkins University Press (P)2019 Tantor

Interesting microhistory read

Such a specific tale and account of a random peasant in Europe. Kept me hooked

Good book, annoying narrator

The book is interesting to me as a study of how the church put down heretics as a means of asserting political control. I didn’t like that long phrases or sentences in Latin and French would be read with no translation. The narrator was super annoying and monotonous. His voice was grating. I might’ve enjoyed this more with a better narrator.

Review

Great Micro-History. Story about a very entertaining and the author uses Resources that are available to him the best he can while using historical imagination at the same time.

Worst. Narration. Ever.

The narrator. Has an odd speech pattern. Where it sounds like. He has ended a sentence. When in fact. He has just reached a comma. This becomes tedious. On a long audiobook.
Otherwise this is a classic book of historiography which I was supposed to read in grad school. Only took me 30 years to get to it.

Excellent

I was completely captivated. Its like one part historical analysis and one part detective story. Highly recommend for anyone interested in social history or medieval times.