Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie – författare

In 1499 in the mountians of Valais, Thomas Platter was born and abandoned. At the age of 10 he walked barefoot out of the hills into the turbulence of 16th century Europe. He wandered the breadth of Europe for nearly 10 years with nomadic beggars and thieves until a chance encounter sparked a humanist conversion, propelling him from illiterate pauper to esteemed professor, printer and, ultimately, patriarch. From autobiographical writings - diaries, travel journals, memoirs - Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie reconstructs the life of Thomas Platter and of his sons. Their careers spanned the entire 16th century, experiencing the close of the Renaissance, the sharp upheaval of the Reformation and the advent of a new bougeoisie. These personal narratives constitute an intimate portrait of the emergence of early modern European society.

From a wealth of vivid autobiographical writings, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie reconstructs the extraordinary life of Thomas Platter and the lives of his sons. With masterful erudition, Le Roy Ladurie deepens and expands the historical contexts of these accounts and, in the process, brings to life the customs, perceptions, and character of an age poised at the threshold of modernity."Le Roy Ladurie paints a remarkably contemporary picture of life in the sixteenth century. . . . It's a good story, told with a deft narrative touch."—Michael S. Kimmel, The Nation"Le Roy Ladurie is a master of the representative detail and uses the Platters' lives as a means to see a whole century 'through a glass, darkly'."—The Independent"Le Roy Ladurie has not only thoroughly sketched out the Platters' particular brand of gusto, he has also made it seem a defining characteristic of the sixteenth century."—The New Republic"All [of] the drama and pathos of a Disney film."—Emily Eakin, Lingua Franca

Hailed as a pioneering work of"total history" when it was published in France in 1966, Le Roy Ladurie'svolume combines elements of human geography, historical demography, economichistory, and folk culture in a broad depiction of a great agrarian cycle,lasting from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It describes the conflictsand contradictions of a traditional peasant society in which the rise inpopulation was not matched by increases in wealth and food production."It presents us with a great study of rural history, an analysis of economic change and a description of a societyin movement that has few equals."-- Washington Post Book World"It is without any doubt one of the most important, if not the most important, monograph of the French Annales school of socio-economichistorians written in the last decade." -- Canadian Historical Review

The tithe is a levy characteristic of the agrarian ancien regime, and is of great interest to historians of traditional societies such as pre-1789 France and other countries of Europe and Latin America until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Measured and recorded from year to year, the tithe forms an indicator which, albeit very approximate, is nevertheless extremely valuable in revealing the trends in agricultural production (grain, wine, stockbreeding ,etc.) over periods of years, decades or centuries. The book is in two parts. The first, by Joseph Goy, deals with theoretical questions and the methods used for research on the tithe and other associated dues. The second part, by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in collaboration with Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide, presents an overview of the conclusions reached from the study of secular fluctuations in the product of the tithe and in other revenues from the land. These results, relating to the long period from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, were obtained from the work of nearly a hundred historians in many countries; their help was an essential element in the writing of the book.

In this second volume of the History of France series, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie provides a masterful account of the early modern period combining a compelling narrative with broad analysis of events and wider comparisons with European history.

This is a story of brilliance, order and sophistication, of supreme confidence and great achievement - that begins in uncertainty and ends in iconoclasm.